TORONTO – Legislation tabled last week by Minister of Education Paul Calandra, if passed, will see more direct control of school boards by the minister.
The Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025, cites recent cases of financial mismanagement by Ontario school boards, and looks to allow more direct oversight and more relaxed requirements for the province to appoint supervisors for boards.
“Parents deserve confidence that school boards are making decisions in the best interests of their children’s education,” said Calandra in announcing the legislation.
Recently, the province appointed supervisors to the Thames Valley District School Board and the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic DSB for alleged financial mismanagement by those board’s trustees.
A supervisor, when appointed, sidelines the decision-making powers of a trustee board, including the hiring or dismissal of that board’s Director of Education.
At the TVDSB, trustees approved of an administrator junket and training to Toronto, including a stay at the Toronto Marriot City Centre Hotel, which is located in Rogers Centre (formerly the Skydome). BHNCDSB trustees approved an art-purchasing tour of Italy to decorate a new school.
The Ministry of Education has also launched investigations into the Toronto District School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board, and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, for running out-of-compliance deficits for several years. A school board is allowed to run a yearly deficit of up to one per cent of its budget, provided the board has an accumulated surplus on its books. The three boards under investigation do not.
T.J. Goertz with the Ontario Public School Board Association said that having some of the standardized practices for financial accountability that are in the new act will help in addressing inappropriate acts by trustees or school boards.
“Let us be clear: the real issue here is that the system is under financial strain. In fact, recent reports and investigations into school boards have mentioned structural deficits due to underfunding,” Goertz said.
According to the OPSBA, even with increased funding by the provincial government in its May 2025 budget, students are still being shortchanged by $404 per student in funding when adjusted for inflation. Special Education funding is shorted by over half a billion dollars as well. Those funding gaps come out of the general school board funding, which has led to structural deficits in school boards.
Calandra said in his announcement that his new legislation will ensure that students are put first.
“Not politics, not bureaucracy,” he said. “We will act decisively when [school boards] fall short of that responsibility.”
The legislation will set out new requirements for school board expense reporting, including public reporting of individual expenses for senior administration; standardize some budget reporting from school boards; add more oversight of children’s aid societies, and add transparency to postsecondary tuition fees.
The far-reaching legislation will also require school boards to add Student Resource Officer programs with local police services.
The act is expected to be passed during the spring session of the Ontario legislature, to go into effect for the 2025-26 school year.
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