Doug Ford says he is still “discussing” whether or not to get rid of elected trustees in Ontario, signalling a final decision has not yet been made on his government’s overhaul of school boards.
Speculation has percolated about the future of trustees for close to a year as Education Minister Paul Calandra embarks on a mission to reform how school boards operate by taking control of some and musing about the future of trustees.
At the end of January, the government put the Peel District School Board under supervision. It joined Toronto public, Toronto Catholic and Ottawa-Carleton on the list of seven boards where trustees have been sidelined.
Calandra previously told Global News he did not plan to change the role of French language board trustees and would maintain some form of Catholic school board elected official because of representation requirements.
“The public school trustees have no constitutional cover whatsoever,” he said.
It had, at one point, seemed the overhaul of school boards could come during the fall sitting of the legislature, which wrapped without new legislation on the issue. Calandra said in December he was aiming to table his changes in the new year.
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Asked if he wanted to see trustees abolished altogether on Monday, Premier Ford suggested a final decision still hadn’t been made.
“We’re sitting down and discussing that and we’ll see when we move forward,” he said. “But I just want to fix the school boards, there’s a lot of waste of taxpayers’ money and we see it.”
In the latest intervention, Bluewater District School Board wrote to the ombudsman asking him to review any potential abolition of school board trustees.
“The removal of English public boards of trustees would also result in the loss of Indigenous representation where it currently exists,” part of the letter read.
“Additionally, a move by the provincial government to remove English public school trustees would have a detrimental impact on the student voice in the affected boards through the loss of student trustees. This is the sole legislated role giving voice to Ontario students in English public schools.”
Calandra has not laid out his full plan for the future of Ontario’s education system, but has maintained some school boards are poorly run and said he wants to take more direct responsibility for their decisions.
“I have not yet provided advice to cabinet on where I want to go,” Calandra said in December. “But to be clear, there is absolutely nothing to date that has moved me from where I have been for months, that trustees aren’t necessarily the right avenue to deliver education across the province of Ontario.”
Ford suggested Monday the education minister would have an announcement on more funding for teachers to purchase classroom supplies in response to a question about the ombudsman letter on Monday.
“Minister Calandra is going to make an announcement, hopefully sooner than later,” he said, after telling a story about meeting teachers in dollar stores.
“Each principal, I hear, gets $300; when I talk to the teachers, they’re saying they don’t even see it. So, we’re going to make that change, and it’s going to be a very, very positive announcement for front-line educators.”
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