I’m a School Trustee, and Doug Ford Wants to Eliminate My Job

One month into the school year, here’s a statement about education that may seem instinctively obvious to some but radically controversial to others: “A strong public education system is the foundation of a prosperous, caring and civil society.”

It might surprise you to learn those lofty words open Ontario’s Education Act. The act defines education as a means to help students “realize their potential” and grow into “knowledgeable, caring citizens.” It stresses that all partners—the minister, ministry, and boards—share responsibility for “maintaining confidence” in the classrooms and communities that make up Ontario’s schools.

That principle of shared stewardship is precisely what Ontario’s education minister, Paul Calandra, now appears ready to dismantle—beginning with one of the country’s oldest democratic traditions. School trustees, first elected in the early 1800s, are part of a system he now dismisses as “outdated and old,” adding that “if that means eliminating [them], then I’m going to do it.”

As a school trustee with the Waterloo Region District School Board, I have to acknowledge that I have some self-interest in the outcome of this discussion (including an annual stipend of $16,160 to reward me for my efforts—an amount the CBC host Natasha Fatah curiously labelled “a hefty wage”). But let me explain why eliminating my job would be a terrible idea.

According to the Education Act, a trustee’s job is to promote “student achievement and well-being” and foster a school climate that is “inclusive and accepting of all pupils.” Trustees also manage resources, set policy, oversee multi-year plans, and hold the director of education accountable for results.

Of course, being a trustee is much more than that. At its core, it’s about addressing concerns from the families of students and connecting them to the information or assistance they need. When, for example, the heritage building that housed a local elementary school was found to have structural issues and had to close, I fielded over a hundred emails and phone calls from parents and sat through a tense town hall where board officials and engineers responded to questions. If trustees are eliminated, who will take those calls or step into those rooms? Based on the experience of school boards like Ottawa-Carleton—recently placed under provincial supervision, with trustees locked out of their email accounts and devices—I’d suggest the answer is no one.

Another key role is advocacy. This month, a signalized pedestrian crosswalk will finally open in my neighbourhood, offering a safe way to cross a four-lane street where the nearest traffic lights are 600 metres apart. For years, parents had worried about how dangerous it was for their children to get across. Having been elected in 2018 on a platform that, among other issues, emphasized safe school routes, I picked up the cause. I have email threads on the issue dating back to January 2019, involving multiple elected officials and staff at the city, regional, and school board level. Many people deserve credit for this improvement, but it’s fair to say it wouldn’t have happened without me keeping the issue alive. Many trustees in the province will have similar stories.

That’s the neighbourhood-level work people see. Trustees are also embedded in nearly every part of how Ontario’s schools operate, including contract negotiations. Collective bargaining happens centrally, with trustee associations as one of three parties at the table. Each board then strikes its own deal to address local matters. This happens for each of seven different unions (on the public side alone). Removing trustees from this complex structure would be like pulling the rug out from under those agreements. What’s more, trustee associations are the quiet brokers that help prevent labour disruptions in the first place, especially when existing agreements are about to expire.

Their responsibilities don’t end there. Trustees also decide on recommendations for expulsions. The Education Act guarantees a student a hearing before a committee of trustees within twenty days of them first being suspended. That committee determines whether to expel the student from all schools, expel them from their particular school only, or overturn the recommendation. Without trustees, who is going to be attending those hearings and giving students accused of wrongdoing the right to due process?

Take trustees out of the picture and what’s left isn’t a school system. It’s a machine with no one left to answer to the people it serves.

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The minister and premier have repeatedly accused school boards of poor fiscal management. They base this on a couple of high-profile examples (trustees from the Brant-Haldimand-Norfolk Catholic School Board taking a trip to Italy to buy art and some Thames Valley District School Board administrators holding a retreat at the Rogers Centre—which trustees never approved) and on the fact that many boards have struggled to balance their budgets.

But let’s be clear, balancing a school board budget is incredibly difficult when the money received from the Ministry of Education doesn’t cover the services that school boards are legally required to provide. Since 2018, inflation-adjusted education funding has shrunk by $776 per student. The province’s own numbers (2024/25 revised estimates) show that sixty-seven of the seventy-two school boards in the province will spend more on special education than they receive through the Special Education Fund. For the 2025/26 school year, my own board is projected to exceed that funding by $5.5 million. Meanwhile, the number of students requiring special education support continues to increase.

And the financial strain doesn’t end there. Employee sick leave costs boards almost 2.5 times what the province provides, a shortfall they have refused to cover. The province also won’t pay for short-term expenditures, such as urgent equipment needs or the hiring of substitute and support staff during absences.

Even mandatory expenses aren’t fully covered. Like any employer, school boards are required to pay Canada Pension Plan premiums, which have risen by one percentage point since 2018 (from 4.95 to 5.95 percent). The province hasn’t adjusted its funding to match, continuing to pay at the old rate—a significant blow for any organization that spends most of its budget on salaries.

With pressures like these, deficits are hardly surprising. It’s remarkable any board manages to balance its books at all—a feat the province itself has yet to master.

Yet the province’s criticism also ignores a key fact: school boards are already among the most closely monitored public institutions in Ontario. An audit committee—made up of trustees and external financial experts—meets at least three times a year to approve the audit plan, review reports, and discuss risk mitigation. Boards are subject to both internal and external audits, and the ministry has real-time access to how they spend and manage their money.

As expected, investigations have yet to turn up a scandal to match the rhetoric. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a multinational accounting firm, said its examination into the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board—which, as mentioned, was taken over by the province this year amid claims of financial misconduct—found no “examples of reckless or deliberate wrongdoing.” They also reported no signs of “financial oversight or governance” issues, nor any actions that could lead to “reputational damage.”

Saying all this won’t win me any friends at the Ministry of Education or in the premier’s office. They don’t exactly welcome criticism and tend to lash out at those who offer it. But that’s the point: their allergy to accountability is what’s behind this move to scrap trustees, and it’s part of something bigger and more troubling.

Since being elected in 2018, the Ford government has eliminated the positions of child advocate, environmental commissioner, and French-language services commissioner—three independent watchdogs who reported directly to the legislature.

It has also assumed control over conservation authorities that manage water, wildlife, and green space, installing a new chief conservation executive to keep them in line. It has used minister’s zoning orders to overrule municipal planning decisions seventeen times more often than previous administrations did. It has given itself the power to tear out bike lanes that it doesn’t like, then railed against the judge that ruled that law unconstitutional. Ford was the first Ontario premier to invoke the notwithstanding clause to allow it to breach Charter rights, and he’s threatened to do so on at least three other occasions (including on the bike lane issue).

Eliminating elected school trustees would be right in line with this government’s playbook. And if that day comes, it won’t be because we didn’t do our jobs. It’ll be because we did them too well for the government’s liking.