School Boards Groping in the Dark
TORONTO – On reading the Investigators’ reports to Education Minister Calandra recommending he place the subject boards under supervision, it was not a question of if, but when it would happen. Money does matter. The Government of Ontario spends 220 billion of our tax dollars annually.
Approximately $30 Billion of that total– roughly 18% of the budget – is transferred n grants from the Ontario government to 72 school boards in Core Education Funding. Accountability has begun to surface as an issue.
Minister of Education Paul Calandra must have asked himself what those boards do for the privilege of serving the public when he launched investigations into School Board spending in Mid-April. By end of May, those investigators completed their examination of four boards – and recommended they be placed under supervision, to avoid financial calamity. They are the largest boards (measured by student average daily enrolment – ADE).
The ADE is an important measurement Calculated and “verified” twice yearly because the ‘cash flows based on numbers counted. The enrolment figures are both a measure of the people’s trust in the ability of the Board to “deliver the goods” and the “legitimacy of the invoice” they submit to the Ministry for payment.
According to the Ministry’s Core Funding for the 2025-2026 School Year, that ADE has been on a downward trajectory in almost all boards (2,067,192 students in 2024-25) for the better part of a decade. In the TDSB it could be described as in free fall: 237,200 in 2024-25 and projected to lose another 1,389 students next year, immigration notwithstanding.
PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC), the Investigator, attributes this insight to TDSB’s Finance, Budget and Enrolment Committee (Structural Deficit Update: 2025-26 Budget (2025)) “…in the 2023-24 year, 155 of the TSDB’s 581 schools have a utilization rate below 65%, and management estimates that TSDB has 63,000 more spaces in schools than there are students”.
Since the average core education funding per pupil stands at $14,231, declining enrolment has already produced a potential shortfall of 896,553,000 dollars. The risks associated with delay in reporting or seeking approvals may be overcome by the potential “reward” – flexibility to allocate staff and other resources to longer-term “educational goals”. But it is not right.
Boards have a plethora of “other sources” of income – for which reporting and permission must be sought and granted. That includes the proceeds of disposition (POD) of unrequired assets – real estate. Those 63,000 spaces have “value”, in today’s world, equivalent to the “cost” of at least 63 high schools. The Ministry could reasonably expect that the TDSB, or any other board for that matter, engage in productive recruitment of students or timely disposition of non-renewable assets (real estate) to result in balanced budgets instead of draining the provincial treasury.
TDSB has a Senior Administration of 48 individuals, at the superintendent level and higher, earning between $209,637 and $337,330 plus benefits. They could not make a case for their long-term plans and how they would finance them, therefore, unable to dissuade PWC from recommending supervision.
The current Director, before taking on the leadership at the TDSB, was an Associate Deputy Minister at the Ministry.
