Ontario’s education minister expects the supervisors he has appointed at various school boards to bill $350,000 each per year, money which will come from the coffers of the local boards.
Several school boards in Ontario, including Toronto public, Toronto Catholic and Ottawa-Carleton, have been under the management of supervisors for months, after the Ford government sidelined trustees for alleged mismanagement.
Education Minister Paul Calandra’s office said supervisors can bill $1,000 per half-day of work for a total of 3.5 days each week. They can charge that for 50 weeks each year, to an annual total of $350,000.
Calandra, who has been poring over the spending of trustees, said he wasn’t aware of exactly how much each supervisor was billing, but assumed it would be the maximum.
“Truthfully, I don’t follow their billing,” he told Global News. “I budget as if they will be because there’s a lot of work to be done… it is my expectation frankly that they will because of the amount of work that has to be done.”
The money, the minister said, will come from school board budgets, not the Ministry of Education.
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Calandra’s office pointed out the total compensation for sidelined trustees at the Toronto District School Board, for example, was just over $550,000 last year. That money isn’t paid to trustees while they’re under supervision.
Trustees at Catholic boards under supervision don’t earn their full salaries but still make a percentage of their fees because of their protected constitutional role.
The appointment of supervisors at school boards comes as Calandra ushers reforms through the legislature to make it easier for him to take over school boards and mulls potentially eliminating trustees altogether.
Opponents have said they will fight that change, arguing the reforms are about centralizing power at Queen’s Park rather than putting it in the hands of local trustees.
Calandra has maintained trustees have mismanaged their boards, citing examples like a trip to Italy to buy art by one board or a day at the Blue Jays stadium by another.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the fees going to supervisors show the government is concerned about control of school boards, not saving money.
“This was never about saving money or fiscal responsibility at the boards,” she said on Tuesday.
“People have to ask themselves, do you want a situation where, wherever you are in the province of Ontario or wherever your school and your community is, do you want all those decisions to be made by somebody in downtown Toronto who is able to bill through the roof, or do you want locally-elected folks who have a direct line to community, to parents, to families and are accountable to them?”
Calandra, however, suggested the $350,000 supervisors can charge to boards is a drop in the bucket for their budgets and fair compensation for the complicated work they have to do.
“I don’t think it’s too much, these are supervisors that are coming into the Toronto District School Board, it’s a multi-billion dollar budget and they’re coming into very difficult situations in these boards,” he said.
“They’re the top people that I could find in order to put these boards back on track. They will do that, and they’re being compensated for that work.”
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