The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Why Are So Many Ontario School Boards Running Deficits?

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Multiple school boards across the province are in the red and students are seeing the effects in staffing, program and supply cutbacks. The Ministry of Education recently reported that 21 boards are reporting in-year deficits of $200 million. The Agenda looks at why these boards are in the shape they're in.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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you didn't know you could become. Exciting, isn't it? Visit tvo.org slash giving Tuesday to make your donation today and discover your 2-point TVO. TVO.org TVO.org TVO.org Multiple school boards across the province are in the red, The Ministry of Education recently reported that 31 boards are reporting in-year deficits of $200 million.

To help us understand why school boards are in the shape they're in, let's ask. Nathan Shan, he is the chair of the Toronto District School Board and Scarborough Centre trustee who's on the line from St. Louis, Missouri. In Scarborough, Ontario, Chris Bershowey, Queen's Park Bureau reporter for the Toronto Star. And with us here in studio, Kathleen Woodcock, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association. and Doug Little, editor of the Little Education Report, and a former Toronto School Board trustee, which is when I first met him, more than 40 years ago, Mr. Little.

Can you believe that? It flies by. It does fly by. We got to do this every time we do a story on education because, in the interest of full disclosure, TVO is an agency of the Ministry of Education. We've been part of the province's delivery of distance learning since this place was created in 1970. Today TVO offers online secondary school courses through the ILC, the Independent Learning Center, and has been

asked by the province to develop online courses for use by secondary schools across the province. So we put that on the record in the interest of full disclosure. Chris, you first. We need the background here. 31 school boards, 200 million in the red. How? Well, you'll hear the Ontario government say that funding is at historically high levels, which technically is true, but the funding has not kept up with inflation.

And I think that's where school boards are really struggling right now. For some school boards, they pay higher wages to teachers than the average. So, you know, that kind of deficit is already baked in for them. They've also seen some mandatory increases to Canada pension, employment insurance, like these are things I have to pay and they haven't been properly funded for. So, you know, combined with the affordability crisis, which families are feeling the pinch, school boards are too. It's more expensive to heat schools and electricity and whatnot.

So I think that's really why you're seeing a lot of boards this year in particular running into trouble. Kathleen, you represent all the school boards across the province, so you've got a good sense of what it looks like out there. What's going on? I'm going to defer to what Chris just said. Funding has just not kept pace with our costs. We are like households.

We are trying to pay for things and services that we have to pay for, and we are not being funded enough. And it's a gap that has grown over time and it's chronic. Chronic? Yeah. Didn't start today? It did not start today. So this goes back? Yes. Gotcha. Okay let's get to Neethan Shan on this one because you represent one of the largest school boards on the whole continent. What's the situation in Toronto? Well, it's the situation that is same, but amplified because of the needs within city of Toronto.

As you can see, OPSPA, Ontario Public School Board Association has calculated about $800 per student underfunding. And some of the other organizations, including Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, have gotten it almost twice that amount. So even if you take the $800 per student, you're looking at a population of 235,000 students

within the city of Toronto, with 42,000 staff and 580 schools. So it's the large school board. And so we are facing the issue at a larger scale, but also City of Toronto, recently Social Planning Toronto released a report on child poverty within City of Toronto. So in addition to the regular flaws in the funding formula, we are also not being acknowledged for a city that is very complex and has a lot of socioeconomic needs and much more work to do. So over the years, as Kathleen mentioned, the chronic underfunding, you know,

each year we feel like we're cutting on a little bit, but over two decades we've cut so much that we cannot recognize our schools when we go in. I, you know, I'm going back to the schools I've been a youth worker in 20 years ago. I was a student and going back and seeing the kind of underfunding and what it means to a school. Like when you cut at a micro level, it's taking away a teacher, makes a big impact in the school. Taking away caretaking hours makes a big impact in the school. So the money that's being cut may not be seen

as proportionally high when we do it, but when we go into a grassroot level at a school level, it is impacting. So it is something that we need to fix quickly. And it's a fix that the province can do if they calculate inflation. OK, well, hang on a sec, Nathan. We'll get to that in a second.

Let me get Doug Little in here, because Nathan says he goes back 20 years. One of the reasons we wanted you here, Doug, is that you go back 40 plus years from your time as a trustee on the school board when you used to cover your meetings back in the day. Compare now to the way things were. Was it better in your day?

It was better. In the mid-90s, they had a report called the Radwonsky Report that said it was scandalous that we were a billion dollars short of what was needed for education. It's now three billion plus that if you factor in, as Chris said, inflation and enrollment growth, there's three and change billion arguable.

And when you ask the government, they always quote, the dollar figure is larger than last year's dollar figure. But when you factor in enrollment growth and inflation, it's less. Well, we've got these numbers here. So let me bring those up and then I'll ask you to comment on them. We're going to show the school year, then we're going to show the actual per pupil funding, and then we're going to adjust it for inflation, and we'll see where that takes us.

In 2018-19, the actual per pupil funding was $12,200 plus and adjusted for inflation, since there would have been none that year, it's the same number. But let's go forward, 2021, 22. Yes, the per pupil funding goes up from 12.2 to $12,700, but when you adjust for inflation, it's actually lower. And then let's do a third year, 2024, 25, the year we're in right now. Again, the actual per pupil funding has gone up to $13,800, but then when

you adjust for inflation, we're actually lower than we were six years ago. We were at $12,282 six years ago, now adjusted for inflation $11,506. Okay, those are the School Board Association's numbers. So Doug, you see those numbers. What story does that tell? It's a priority situation. It always has been. I noticed that the School Board funding in Ontario is now about 17% of the Ontario budget. Back in my day it was 25 percent, before that it was 30 percent. And it's gotten worse over time. And there's other things involved. Nathan mentioned poverty. There's a mental health crisis among young people that costs a lot of money and is still not well addressed. And it just compounds year after year. And Ontario is in the bottom half by provinces

of per student funding. It's a shame when one of the three half provinces, as we call them, is in the bottom half. Alberta's terrible, but we shouldn't compare to the worst. I mean, New Brunswick's ahead of us in per student funding. In per student funding. Yeah. Kathleen, you've seen those numbers.

What story do you think it tells? I think I agree with Doug that it does tell the story of priorities. And if you're not in inputting the right amount of funding, you're not investing in your kids, and you're not investing in our future. And to pick up on what Nathan said, it's approximately a gap of around $800 per student.

Opsfor represents $1.4 million. So if you do the math, that's over a billion dollars that is not coming into our system. So we need that in order to provide the proper and quality education that we know we can deliver. Chris, I know you've talked to the education minister, members of the government about this, and they will say to you, and they are being accurate when they say it, our per-pupil funding allocation goes up every year. Can you sort of pick that argument apart for us?

Does that make sense as an argument if you're a member of this government? Well, yes, it makes sense for them, because the number is larger than it has been. But as we've said, when you factor in inflation and all kinds of other things, it's actually not. I mean, successive governments have put more money into education. For example, full-day kindergarten, right? Kindergarten kids about a decade ago were in school half the day

now they're in for the full day which meant more teachers and more EAs. Certainly there's been money put into more math facilitators. I mean if you talk to the government they'll say there's 9,000 extra education staff, 3,000 extra teachers. A lot of these are for literacy and things like that. So money has gone to targeted pockets, special ed. I think funding for that was up as well this year, transportation, but we still see troubles in these areas. So the funding is obviously not where boards would like them to be at this point.

Neethan, when you speak to the minister of education about these issues and you point out this gap to her, how does that conversation go? Well, we've had change in the minister recently, so we haven't really had, and I've taken this role recently, so I haven't had a direct conversation with the minister, but we have had consistent conversation

with the Ministry of Education and Ministers over the past few years as a school board. I think the main thing is there's always the same narrative that we are funding more. But where is the priority? This is an investment, not an expenditure. And we see the announcement of $200 tax rebate or whatever you may call it going to even billionaires.

And we're talking about children asking for this $800 at the minimum to be fixed. So where is the priority? And if we can get the priority right, if we can get this immediate support, the injection of this fund, the school boards can then breathe and start looking at new things

and changing to all of the new policies and curriculum changes and all this stuff. We've been bombarded with different mechanisms of making things better with this chronic underfunding situation doesn't give the ground support to do it. So I think that's what we've been saying. The ministry is announcing great things every year, at least four or five new things, but

we want to make sure that we can have the bases covered for us to be able to do all of those things. And that means this injection of the funding that's necessary across the province. Let me pick up on that with Doug Little. And yes, Neetham is quite right. There is a $200 check going out to most people in the province of Ontario in the new year. That'll cost the Treasury three billion plus.

They could have spent that, I guess, on education. But let me put an argument to you and then get you to react to it. My hunch is the Minister of Finance is saying, if I give it to all the school boards, they're going to spend it on teacher salaries and principal salaries and it probably won't get down to the classroom where it's needed. Whereas if I just give everybody a $200 check, the Ford government will be covered in glory and get lots of credit for doing something. Discuss. Good politics, not good policy. It's a dollar invested in education will generate about four

dollars in economic activity if you want the people in the northern Waterloo Research area and Correll and so forth if you want the staffing for those things if you want us to be leaders in a new high Tech economy you invest in education. It's not a cost. It's an investment Kathleen when you saw the news that a $200 check at the cost of $3 billion plus was going out to most of the people in this province, I'm trying to imagine what your reaction was. What did you think? Well, without being rude, I will agree with Doug in that it is politics that is getting away in the way of educating our students. So if you had that three billion, what would you do with it rather than mail a check to

everybody? Oh, I would spend it on services and programs in our schools. I would build better schools. We would have the ability to consolidate some of our schools. Right now we have a freeze on the pupil accommodation review and that is causing a lot of pressure on our budgets because we can't look at some of our older buildings that really have lesser enrollment and should really be perhaps closed or consolidated with other schools and we can build modern energy efficient schools for kids. We did ask the Ministry of Education for a response to that which we are discussing here

tonight and here is part of what they said in a statement to us. The Ministry of Education responds, school boards should not, they say, be recording deficits. Overall, school boards are in good financial health with an accumulated surplus of $1.3 billion. But we're seeing a startling disconnect at some boards when it comes to financial management. We heard from parents that they do not want to see

the same liberal track record of schools being closed across the province. We stand with parents that they do not want to see the same liberal track record of schools being closed across the province. We stand with parents and are keeping schools open at this time with the expectation that schools act as responsible stewards of public dollars and balance their budget. Let's get some reaction to that. Chris, as you look at that statement from the Ministry of Education, what jumps out at you for comment? Well, the one thing I do want to say is that in your deficits are different than end of year deficits. So you know within the year, the fiscal year, the school boards might be running deficits. So 31 apparently are now. By the end of the year we'll see where that number lands because you know money is spent at different times throughout the year. That is what the government also recently argued at a committee meeting that because of

accounting practices you may see deficits deficits right now You know, the one thing I did just want to mention when it comes to school board finances is, you know, the boards do say they don't have money, you know, with regards to the government, they don't do themselves any favors when we keep hearing about spending scandals, you know, with trips and things like that to, you know, there's one board, the branch Catholic board where four of six trustees went to Italy spent $150,000 flew first class dated upgraded hotels bought religious statues I mean you know on that front you know when the province says the boards need to be spending their money I think that resonates with the public. Kathleen I should get you to comment on that because obviously those

headlines do not help you when you want to make the argument that the system is underfunded. How unhelpful is that kind of conduct? That's a long pause, Kathleen. Yes, it is. And it's really trustees and school boards across the province, trustees do want to, they are responsible for account, they're being accountable and Transparent about how they spend the money that the government provides for education There are times when sometimes having a trustee at the local level

Will help to make sure that that accountability and transparency is there because you've got people that are local to the community living working playing in your community and they know the needs and the the that's not the issue here though you know the issue the issue here Nathan I'll go to you on this. Okay we understand that the trips to Hawaii look terrible and the headlines are going to Italy to price out statues for schools I mean those kinds of stories look terrible and admittedly it's it's small potatoes when compared to the overall subject but let's be honest that does not help your

case. Fair to say? It totally doesn't help our cause. It totally doesn't do justice to the trustees who are doing a massive amount of work for an honorary area across the province, if you know how trustees are compensated. So it is sometimes the few examples that we have seen alarming, but at the same time, it's not reflective of the work that we do. We post all of our expenses

in Toronto District School Board online. I welcome anybody to come and look at our, even $100 goes through so much thought before it's spent on some sort of a material for trustees and so on. So that is reflective of all the boards, most of the boards across. And so, just like anywhere else,

some examples can spoil it for everybody and when you hear trustees you're not hearing just about that board everybody starts to assume it could be any of the trustees so but there's also a political reason for exaggerated focus on that when we actually have a billion dollar shortfall across the province chronic underfunding you know when we talked about that that $200 he said it goes to principals and teachers. We need principals and teachers. We have schools that are close to 500 people

without a vice principal. We have principals have to deal with all sorts of things under the roof. So I don't think we should disassociate money to going to staffing who are actually the face of our education on the frontline. So I do think this is a bit of a distraction. It's unfortunate.

It is actually not great news. But it needs to be held accountable. I'm all for greater accountability on trustee spending. But we have a bigger problem to solve, and we hope that focus stays there as well. Doug Little, how much do those kinds of stories, and admit it, I mean, we can admit this.

The number of trustees who sort of abuse their position is a very small number. It's obviously not the majority. But when it happens, it makes headlines. Chris's paper publishes 60-point headlines about people taking trips to places they perhaps shouldn't. What does that do to the cause? It hurts the cause.

I wish those trustees wouldn't do it. But on a scale that we're talking about, somebody in the province wants $50 billion to dig a tunnel under the 401. We're three billion short in education. The scale is ridiculous. But somehow we've decided that this is the issue, this little scandalous Italian trip.

You can see that as the magician's distraction. The magician's distraction, got it. Chris, maybe you could help us shine a light on something else that we hear about. And again, this is anecdotal evidence I'm gonna bring forward here, and you tell me how widespread or relevant it is. You know, we do hear stories about

when they need to change a pencil sharpener in a classroom, there's a huge process you've got to go through. And it ends up, you can end up spending $150 for a pencil sharpener. Or for example, if you've got to change a light bulb, there's a whole process you've got to go through. And it's not a matter of a $2 light bulb suddenly you're into $100, this, that, and the other thing.

Are the fixed costs within the school system in this province so out of control that the government has in its wisdom said, this is one of the reasons we're not gonna give you the money that you want? Well, this certainly is an issue for boards. And I think there is a sense that boards are overpaying for some things.

I mean, certainly as an education reporter and now at Queens Park, I still hear from parents about frustrations. And I mean, I remember hearing from one parent who said, we just wanted to replace the carpet. The parents wanted to fundraise and replace the carpet in a kindergarten classroom. And Sears would do it for $1,500, but the board was saying, no, you had to go with their contract and it was going to be $6,000. So I think there probably is waste there that parents for sure feel very frustrated about. Kathleen, why does this persist? Well, boards have to follow certain rules of having vendor lists and

these kinds of things for accounting purposes. Who makes these rules though? The government. The provincial government? Sure. So the province forces you to spend $6,000 on carpeting when parents could do it for $1,500. That's what it looks like, yes. Our only funder is the government and they have rules around how we need to, there are accounting rules, how we need to put things out

to tender and we have to follow the list that are the the acceptable vendors that meet the criteria of the government. But are those your rules or the province's rules? It's in the legislation. It's in the Education Act. As far as I'm aware. Doug can you help us on this? There are some times I can remember meetings where a contract would be tendered and the

staff would stand up and say although the lowest tender is this figure from this company we recommend you take this other company because company A did not meet the qualifications, did shoddy work, something like that. So you're not always taking the lowest bid based on your experience with different companies. Neethan, how does it work in the Toronto School Board? Can you go with a lower bid if it's there? If it's all the vendors are approved vendors, yes. I do agree with the general feeling that we could do better. We could do better in terms of reducing some of the costs.

But I also wanna mention one of the other consideration is safety. One of my parents' father could say that they could fix this thing, but who takes the liability if that gets broken? So there is a health and safety angle to it, labor agreement angle to it, and all of those things come into play. But I do agree as a trustee, I'm constantly asking the

question, can we do better? You know, the thing calls to, but I have to say, you know, again, the pencil sharpener story gets talking about, but we know our teachers are buying their own supplies with their, elementary teachers are buying their supplies with their own money. So sometimes you get these stories, but the reality is different. Staff, elementary teachers are buying supplies with their own money. So we got to keep things in context, but I agree. We have to do better in terms of how we, we have to still ensure financial accountability. We have to still ensure health and safety and labor agreements, but could do better. And that's something that we can work together always.

And we are improving. As a board, we're constantly looking at it every budget. Chris, you're down at Queens Park a lot. Gauge the temperature of the current provincial government. Is there an appetite in your view, based on your reporting, to improve on the numbers that they're transferring to school boards now? Well certainly at the moment the call is for transparency. I know the minister, Jill Dunlop, the new education minister, was very upset about some of these spending scandals,

the trips and whatnot. She said that long term the government may be looking at school board models, which may be meaning looking at trustees. We're not really sure. That may have just been a snap to keep boards in line. But, you know, for sure there are certain things that the government's looking at and wanting to improve. But, you know, again, their line is that they are spending more than ever in the history of the province. Just a follow-up, can you imagine the current government of Ontario abolishing school boards? Personally, no. I know other provinces have tried it. I think it would be very difficult in a province

the size of Ontario. I think, too, you know, having elected trustees and having school boards, there is, you know, you can be sensitive to local situations. Parents know they have an advocate. If they have a trustee, they can go to, as opposed to a bureaucracy. Doug, can you imagine the province

banning school boards altogether? From a strictly political point of view, the school boards provide insulation from the province that they don't have. If the province were to ban school boards, every problem would fall at Queen's Park. People would be going to Queen's Park

that Tommy's in the wrong class. I want him in the other class. Somebody's got to solve that problem. So the school boards, since they were conceived, have provided that insulation from the government. The government can, oh, that's a local decision? That's nothing to do with us, except they insist on being the only funder. So they don't want the responsibility,

but they want to be the only funder. I believe they are actually the oldest form of government we have in this country. Is that not the case? That is true, Steve. School boards and trustees have been around since longer than Canada has been a country. Pre-Confederation. Right.

Right. And so having those folks who do, as I said before, work and live in their community. They're at the local level, they know the needs of the communities, and boy oh boy, and they're more accessible. Well here's where I jump in and say yes, but you could imagine a government saying, boy think of all the bureaucracy we could get rid of, or think of all the expenditures related to trustees we could get rid of, if we just with a signature of the pen decided to eliminate school boards. What would be lost if we did that?

A lot and I just want to remind folks that the trustees they get an honorarium. If the government wants to save a bundle of money by getting rid of trustees, I think they need to reconsider that because the honorariums range, I don't know exactly the exact figures, but when you have a school board in the north with low enrollment, it may be the honorarium may range from $5,000 a year to maybe upwards to maybe $30,000 in really large boards. I don't know. Doug, I'm trying to remember.

Was it the Mike Harris government that actually put the cap on honorariums? I think it was. Yeah. So this is 30 plus years ago. They said the salaries were getting out of hand and they capped it at $5,000. I think, Nathan, they've increased it for Toronto School Board trustees. I mean, if you don't mind my asking, how much do you get paid?

Yeah, it's all through enrollment-based structure. I think Toronto District School Board right now probably close to around 25,000 base trustee honorarium. And how many hours a week do you work for that? I mean, some of us, each trustee can do different things. Some trustees spend like 15 hours a week, some trustees spend five hours a week as a chair. There's a slight increase, but chairs sometimes

in large school boards are spending 20, 25 hours a week at the minimum. So for an honorarium, and the expenditure that's associated with trustees is also very small. We get about $10,000 per year for all of the expenses that are related to communications and everything else. So, you don't really save much by, you actually would take on a lot more work.

But I have to say on that question, as trustees, I think we, this is my personal opinion. I think we should be worried about whether we are gonna be gotten rid of or not. We have a role to play as advocates. We'll continue to do that role despite what the province decides to do because that's what we signed up for

and it's not the honorary. So our advocacy comes first and foremost for us and we'll continue to do that because the position may come and go, but the role that we signed up for has to be kept intact. Let's just, again, in our remaining moments here, two minutes to go? Okay, thank you. Let me put that to you, Doug.

If you had that billion dollars or two billion dollars that the three of you seem to be saying is the shortfall, the three of you who work in the system seem to be saying is the shortfall right now, what would you do with that money? My first priority would be lower class size, as much as you possibly could. But other people would have other priorities. You probably needed to keep the lights on and keep the heat on. We're down to that level to keep the schools open. It's not a matter of what extra would you like to have, it's a matter of keeping the ships off load.

Chris, what do you hear in your reporting about what the system immediately needs in terms of a cash infusion? Yeah, I mean I would say probably the money would just be used to cover the real costs of providing education. I'm sure school boards would like to have more teachers and more resources, especially you know the teachers unions have for sure had a campaign about violence in schools and the needs for more supports and especially for special education. Nathan, let me give you the last word on this. If the province of Ontario in its wisdom decided to put an extra billion into the system, what would you do with it?

Directly to schools, you know, whether it be caretaking to mental health support teachers, small classrooms. We want to see it in the schools. We want to see it right there, making an impact right there in the classroom. So we need more funding for special education, underfunded, seriously. So there's a lot to be done.

I'll just finish off by saying that, by enrollment, if you got those $800 per student, each school will be able to decide what makes the most amount of sense and give that autonomy to the schools to figure what works a little bit better for them. And obviously keep it accountable, but I think different schools need different things

and we need to be able to be responsive for it. Gotcha. Mr. Director, thank you. I was just gonna ask you for a four shot so I could thank all of our guests. Kathleen Woodcock, the president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association. Doug Little. You can read his wisdom in the Little Education Report, which is not an indication of its size, it's just an indication of its owner's name.

Christopher Shoei from the Queen's Park Bureau of the Toronto Star, and Nathan Shan, who's the chair of the Toronto District School Board, what we used to back in the day call the Toronto Board of Ed. Thanks to the four of you for coming on to TVO tonight. We're grateful for your time.