{"id":19598,"date":"2025-06-27T17:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T17:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/19598\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T17:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T17:19:15","slug":"ford-government-sends-supervisors-into-tdsb-and-others-sidelining-trustees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/19598\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford government sends supervisors into TDSB and others, sidelining trustees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ford government<\/a> will sideline trustees at four school boards, including Canada\u2019s largest board, as the education minister continues a hands-on approach to governance reform.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On Friday, Minister Paul Calandra announced he would send supervisors into Toronto, Toronto Catholic, Ottawa-Carleton and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.<\/p>\n

The Thames Valley District School Board in western Ontario has recently also been placed under supervision.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach of these boards has failed in its responsibilities to parents and students by losing sight of its core mission \u2014 ensuring student success,\u201d Calandra said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will take action to restore focus, rebuild trust and put students first.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move effectively gives the provincial government control over the day-to-day decisions of those boards, taking it away from trustees elected in October 2022.<\/p>\n

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Provincially appointed supervisors will now make calls ranging from the financial to new bylaws or facilities.<\/p>\n

Recently tabled legislation \u2014 which has not yet been passed into law \u2014 will make it easier for Calandra to take control of school boards in the future, allowing him to sideline trustees for reasons not related to financial mismanagement and without a recommendation from a third party.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tFinancial investigations at 4 boards\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The decision to dispatch supervisors to four of Ontario\u2019s largest school boards follows financial investigations into them.<\/p>\n

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Investigations into the two Toronto boards and Ottawa-Carleton were completed on May 30, while a review of Dufferin-Peel was launched at the beginning of June and completed in a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n

The probe ofthe\u00a0 Toronto District School Board found a projected deficit of $11.3 million for the current school year and $58 million for next year, according to the government. Rohit Gupta will take over as supervisor.<\/p>\n

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At Toronto\u2019s Catholic board, the government said, the budget deficit for the current year of $75.2 million. Ottawa-Carleton is facing a deficit of $9.2 million this year. Frank Benedetto will take over the Toronto Catholic board, and Robert Plamondon will handle Ottawa.<\/p>\n

The government said the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board \u201cis at a significant risk of defaulting on its financial obligations\u201d and faces a deficit of $106 million.<\/p>\n

The government said supervision of the board had already been recommended in August 2023. Rick Byers, a former Progressive Conservative MPP, will be given the role of supervisor in Peel.<\/p>\n

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The four boards are among the largest in Ontario. Calandra said he didn\u2019t believe the size of the student population explained the deficits.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so,\u201d he said.\u201d There are decisions that have been made in each of these boards, where they have chosen to avoid accountability. They\u2019ve chosen not to bring their budgets into balance. Each board has a different challenge.<\/p>\n

The education minister suggested supervisors and investigators could still be sent to more boards \u2014 and promised a massive overhaul of how the sector is governed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a broader rethink of the governance structure \u2014 of boards \u2014 is required,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is an important first step, but it is certainly part of my thinking of the next little bit as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\tSecond wave of school board changes\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The changes announced Friday follow a major April announcement by Calandra, in which he took over the Thames Valley board and set in motion investigations into Toronto, Toronto Catholic and Ottawa-Carleton.<\/p>\n

The latter three, he said at the time, all faced massive financial difficulties.<\/p>\n

He also set a series of deadlines for the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board to submit a governance plan \u2014 and work out how to repay the costs of a $145,000 trip to Italy and an art purchase.<\/p>\n

In April, Calandra said the Brant Haldimand Norfolk board had spent more than Thames Valley \u2014 which put almost $40,000 toward a trip to the Toronto Blue Jays Hotel \u2014 but that its finances were ultimately in better shape.<\/p>\n

It avoided having a supervisor appointed, but was given a 30-day deadline to complete financial and management recommendations, as well as to repay the costs of the trip.<\/p>\n

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Calandra said on Friday, one trustee at the board had not repaid his expenses from the trip \u2014 and threatened to table legislation to remove him from his position if he did not.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ford government will sideline trustees at four school boards, including Canada\u2019s largest board, as the education minister…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,79,18405,50,18406,18404,80,18407],"class_list":{"0":"post-19598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-ford-government","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ontario-education","13":"tag-ontario-politics","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-tdsb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114756476463150363","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}