Balance your budget or be taken over, education minister warns Toronto school board
The Toronto public board needs to balance its budget or the province will step in and take over, Education Minister Paul Calandra threatened as trustees there push back against the $58 million in cuts they need to get out of the red.
'The Toronto District School Board has been running multi-year deficits. What they're being asked to do is find savings of less than two per cent on an over $3 billion budget,' Calandra said Thursday during daily question period, adding it could be 'finding savings by reducing the amount of superintendents that they have, by going after the $35 million of paid leave that they have.'
The board is among
five being targeted
by the province for financial issues, and Calandra has previously announced he was sending in an investigator to look at Toronto's books.
He accused the board of going after students by suggesting closing pools or firing itinerant music teachers instead of cutting administration.
'What they didn't say is, 'We're going to look at the record number of superintendents who are littered all over the Sunshine List.' They went from 3,000 to 8,000 people on the Sunshine List. 'We're not looking at that at the TDSB.' Why? Because the TDSB and the trustees are all about protecting themselves at the expense of students, at the expense of teachers.'
To trustees, he added, 'let me be very clear. Do the right things for students; do the right things for teachers. If you don't, I'll take you over and I'll put the board back on track.'
The government has touted its record level of education funding, which now sits at about $29 billion. School boards, however, say when inflation is factored in, per-student funding is down by about $1,500 at a time they are facing increasing costs — some of them mandatory, including employment insurance.
Liberal MPP Jonathan Tsao (Don Valley North) said it is time the government 'commit to properly funding' the board.
'While I agree that fiscal responsibility matters, we also can't ignore the real challenges facing the students across the (Toronto public board) ... due to chronic underfunding,' Tsao said.
'Parents and teachers in my riding are deeply — deeply — concerned about the impact of the inaction of this government over the past seven years, especially on special education, IT programs, and opportunities in music, drama, sports and the arts. On top of that, aging infrastructure only adds to these pressures.'
Trustees at the TDSB, among the largest school boards in North America, voted Wednesday at a special meeting to direct Chair Neethan Shan to 'continue to seek to engage the minister of education with urgency regarding the need for budget 2025 and education funding for 2025-26 to address the growing inflationary gap in per pupil education funding, special education funding, and other areas.'
Some parents have urged the board to not cut staff or delay distributing Chromebooks to students, and instead pressure the government to provide additional funds.
The board initially faced a $70.3 million deficit that was lowered to $58 million after the federal government eliminated the carbon tax. Almost $44 million of the shortfall is attributed to statutory Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance increases.
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