Why do Experts in Education Still Retain Their Jobs
TORONTO – A year after investigations into financial [in]competencies of school boards, eight of Ontario’s seventy-two (72) school boards were placed under supervision. An endless litany harkening the “getting back to basics” mantra prefaced the Government’s grand corrective project in the Legislature in Bill 101 – Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026.
As if on cue, the usual boiler plate responses came from the usual quarters: progressive, downtown political types, teachers’ unions and secularists. All of them demand increased financial outlays. In this last fiscal/academic year the Average Core Education Funding has actually gone up, from $13,613 per pupil to $13,890. So has the total amount for every one of the sectors contained in the so-called funding pillars, including non-instructional expenditures like the School Transportation Fund.
The number of students upon which those expenditures are based has been on a decline for years now. In the Toronto (quasi) Catholic District School Board, despite a decline of 569 students from 85,003 in 2023-24 to 84,434, in 2024-25, receive an additional $15,649,176. It abandoned the International Day Languages Program to “save” $5 million.
Staying with the TCDSB, thank you to senior Staff who topped up their own salaries before the Supervisor approved the upcoming budget. Presumably, Bill 101 will not negatively impact the Special Education funding in the Board’s overall Budget plan.
It should not, for two reasons, (1) the Special Education Fund had already been approved from $127,553,505 to $130,048,934, and (2) because the new Director will be a CEO who knows how to count and not a Chief Education Officer who knows how to spend that $130 million on our most vulnerable children: the identifiably disadvantaged due to mental health issues, medically induced difficulties like ADHD, developmental delay, physical impairment, sufferers of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and others.
They are at the mercy of those entrusted with their care and development. As a percentage of the total registered population over the last ten years, they represent a 7% growth whereas the rest of the student population has grown by 4%. “Return to basics” is a foreign language for those children and for their teachers.
Upon reading the Auditor General’s Report on Special Education, released on May 12, 2026, one sees a disastrous administration of programme, attendance, monitoring, record-keeping, adaptation to learning needs and scarce planning for teacher absence and so on. Who is responsible for the unholy mess of lack of service?
Remember the blame for every evil known to education is being blamed on publicly elected trustees whose preeminent obligation is to approve [or not] policies and allocations of funds pursuant to Ministry guidelines for Ministry approved expenditures. The individuals responsible are the Administrators (Directors and Senior Superintendents) at all boards, the Ministry (Deputy Minister and supporting Staff) and the Education Industry – lobbyists and suppliers of educational material and services to make Learning a formative experience.
Our children depend on them and a judicious application of regulations and resources to protect them, nurture their expectations, those of their parents on behalf of the health of our culture and that of the next generation. One cannot help but conclude that Mme La Guillotine has not been terribly busy.
