OttawaSchool trustees and education experts have criticized the Ontario education minister’s suggestion that he could eliminate elected trustees, with the advocates arguing they provide critical accountability while the real issue is provincial underfunding of education.School trustees challenge education minister’s comment on getting rid of Ontario school boardsCBC News · Posted: Aug 21, 2025 11:54 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours agoOntario Education Minister Paul Calandra says he is open to the idea of eliminating elected school trustees in the province. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)School trustees and education experts have criticized the Ontario education minister’s suggestion that he could eliminate elected trustees, with the advocates arguing they provide critical accountability while the real issue is provincial underfunding of education.Paul Calandra told CBC he is considering doing away with school trustees as part of a review of the provincial governance model. Already he has appointed supervisors to take over five of Ontario’s biggest school boards and put all 72 boards on notice to direct funds to classrooms.But school boards play an important role in allocating funding in accordance with the needs of local communities and speaking out when budgets are inadequate, according to Alan Campbell, president of the Canadian School Boards Association.”Local school boards are often the first voices to say, ‘This provincial support is no longer adequate and here are some of the manifestations of those inadequacies,'” he told CBC. Eliminating elected trustees would reduce that local level of accountability, he said. “The people of Ontario need to understand that a removal of school boards is a removal of their voice when it comes to what the local public school looks like and how the local public school operates,” he said.Campbell urged those people concerned by the minister’s suggestion to respond “quickly and loudly.”Ottawa Carleton District School Board trustee Lyra Evans says eliminating school boards would reduce faith in public education. (Robyn Bresnahan/CBC)Lyra Evans, an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) trustee, said eliminating school boards would reduce faith in public education. “The main difference you’re going to feel is when there are problems,” she said. “It’ll hurt people’s ability to get answers about what’s going on in schools.”In April, Calanda announced that the province would appoint a supervisor to oversee the OCDSB after it projected a fifth straight year of financial deficits.Evans said when trustees were asked to slash spending due to austerity budgets, it led to acrimony, dysfunction and resignations. Centralizing administration would not fix this and would mean less local input into decision-making, she said. “You’re just going to be at the whims of Toronto.”‘At the mercy’ of bureaucracyOther provinces have eliminated elected school boards as part of overhauls to their education systems, including in Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia.After Nova Scotia eliminated school boards in 2018, enhanced parent councils to oversee schools never functioned as planned, according to Sachin Maharaj, an assistant professor of education at the University of Ottawa.Parents were too busy and didn’t understand the system, he said. Instead, “schools just became less responsive to parents and community members.” Without elected boards, the system becomes more bureaucratic, “and parents and community members and students are just more at the mercy of the different layers of that bureaucracy,” he said.The Ontario government has exploited a few examples of financial mismanagement as a pretext for the takeover and then eventual elimination of school boards, Maharaj argued, noting that the majority of the 72 school boards do not face such accusations. “Most of the boards that are dealing with financial difficulties are dealing with them for largely reasons beyond their control,” he said. “They don’t control their own revenues.”Ontario’s education minister tells CBC News he would consider eliminating school board trustees in the province In an interview with CBC’s Kate Porter at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa, Paul Calandra said the way schools are governed in the province is “outdated” and “old.” He says if the province determines they can deliver a better product without trustees, they will.’A critical point in underfunding’Beth Mai, a trustee for the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB), said Calandra was blaming boards like hers for problems caused by the province not investing enough in education. The province assumed operations of TVDSB from trustees in April, alleging financial mismanagement at London’s public school board.”They are capitalizing on current crises to justify the decisions that they are looking to make,” she said. “The reality is that education has been underfunded and is now at a critical point in underfunding.”Mai called for public pushback against eliminating school boards. “I would be shocked if trustees continue to exist after this municipal term unless there is significant communication from the public that they value local decision making,” she said.The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association said locally elected Catholic school trustees have a “long history of effective representation of parents and the Catholic community and dedicated service in support of the wellbeing of students.” CBC has contacted the education ministry and the minister’s office for comment.
Eliminating trustees would leave schools ‘at the whims of Toronto’
