The Ben Mulroney Show - Ontario Min. of Education's plan to fix the school boards

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

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All right, time for a very big announcement. If you are a parent anywhere in Ontario with kids in the public school system you have been paying very close attention to what the Minister of Education in that province has been saying has been doing he's been keeping an eye on the school boards he said that big decision was coming and he is here today to talk about it Minister Kalandra thank you for being here thank you for having me man appreciate it all right so what is the big news here they think that in the benford shit all right so what is the big news

well today we've uh... announced that uh... after investigation into four different school board that uh... we will be assuming responsibility in sending supervisors in to uh... run uh... the trunk district school board talk catholic uh... school board auto carl School Board, and the Deferham Peel Catholic School Board. And you know we've already got the Thames Valley School Board under supervision. So that's five of the largest boards in Ontario

now under supervision. Okay, so you're placing somebody, what, at the top of the board, or is the board dissolved? How does this work? Yeah, so what happens on the public side, there is somebody on the top of the board, absolutely. Supervisor who represents me at the top of the board. On the public system, the trustees are for all intents and purposes. Well, not officially, but they're laid off and their decision making when it comes to financial, the operations of the board are completely taken over by the supervisor. Their honorarium is reduced to zero and any meetings that they may have had at the board are

for all kinds of purposes cancelled and the supervisor takes over. On the Catholic side it's a touch different. While all the financial decisions will go to the supervisor, denominational issues with respect to Catholic education, that will remain with the trustees. There's a constitutional requirement of that. Their salaries or honorarium will be reduced by 75% as a result. Minister, this is a huge deal. This is upending sort of the system that every parent has known for as long as as long as I can go back in my memory. What justifies this change? Yeah, by and large these boards here are all

boards that are largest boards in the province. They are running multi-year deficits. It's less about on three of the boards, I don't know running multi-year deficits. It's less about on three of the boards, I don't know if it's on three of them, Frank, it's less about what they've done and what they're, it's more about what they're not doing. Refusing to bring the budgets back into balance, not working with the minister with respect to multi-year plans. The Ottawa Carlton Board is an absolute mess. The trustee has resigned. Your parents up in arms over decisions that they're making. Both of these boards, both Toronto, the TBSB in Ottawa, you know, last minute versions to try and stamp through balanced budgets at the last minute. Quite the fact that they

wouldn't do it. But then based on the fact that in Toronto, I think some $30 million worth of sales to try and balance the budget. We got to drill down on that. But first, so essentially there are two buckets, right? There's the deficits that they're running and the mismanagement. Those are sort of the two chief complaints. And would you say that those two chief complaints exist in all of the school boards that the province is taking over? All of the school boards that we're taking over and I don't want to stop there though I'll just say this even in boards where they're running a surplus there are decisions that trustees are making that take money out of the classroom, so they should all be put on notice. Yeah, yeah. Well, but what I was blown away by was learning that in a lot of cases,

in order to make up the budget deficits, these school boards are selling assets? Yeah, they sell assets. And when you sell assets, Frank, with our approval, it is to go into repairing the pool, not to balance your budget. And that's why we're stepping in. I mean, the reality is different. Can you give me an example of some of the assets that were sold? Because by the way, I pay very close attention to this sort of thing.

I've never heard of sort of this sort of thing going on. Well yeah every year we will have requests to sell unused schools or surplus schools for instance and by law a surplus school first has to be offered to other boards but if it's not needed it can be sold but then the proceeds are supposed to go to repair other schools. And you keep hearing right now, you know, air conditioning in school. Well, it's not meant to balance the budget. It's meant to fix schools.

So it means that the school, Toronto TBSB, for instance, is still running a $30 million deficit. So it's not the way to manage. It's why we're stepping in. They've got to make difficult decisions. I understand that. But look, the vast majority of the boards, it's a per-student funding model. The vast majority of the boards are able to not only balance the budget, but operate in

surplus. These ones have refused to do it, and that's why we're stepping in. Minister, I was at my daughter's graduation for primary school. She's in the TDSB, and I saw the dedication of the teachers. I saw how much they cared. I saw the principal who had made so many connections with these kids. I watched the faces of the kids and how excited they were to be graduating together. And when I knew that we were having this conversation,

I got so frustrated because I'm sure that these teachers made requests for X, Y or Z so they could improve the experience in the classroom for the kids and they were told no. And now to find out that so much of the reason that these boards plead poverty is mismanagement, it angers me as a parent. Yeah, well, I said that in one of my initial news conferences in April. We can't have teachers or educators go into dollarama because boards are refusing to provide resources to the classroom. It's just absolutely wrong.

And that's why we're stepping into these boards and we'll step into other boards. To be clear, if we have to step into other boards that are even running differently or running on a balanced budget or surplus, but they're taking money out of the classroom away from teachers, away from students, we will step in, redirect it back into the classroom, give the teachers the resources they need, and get on with ensuring that our students are prepared for work. Man, teachers work really hard. You've seen that. You saw that. They are busting their butt every single day. Teachers, educators, ECE, and all their athletes and students to do their job.

100%. Okay, so the province is taking this over. Is there a timeline? What's the plan? Is the plan to overhaul these school boards, dismantle build something new is this a temporary measure is the plan to bring it back to tell me what what the long-term plan is here yeah first and foremost in the in the short term the supervisors are charged with bringing the budgets back into balance they're not expected to do that immediately because what I want them to do is look at

the structural problems within each of these boards. I want them to look at where money's being spent, where it's not being spent to the classroom, redirected in. But as I said in April, everything is on the table right now. Obviously we have a challenge with governance, school board governance in the province of Ontario. School board trustees aren't getting along with each other.

We have challenges all over the place. We have boards refusing to live up to their obligations and seems to be the common denominator in a lot of cases are trustees who don't understand their mandate, don't understand their role and then some boards which take advantage of that. And the people that suffer, teachers, students, and parents who get really frustrated when they don't see their kids succeeding the way they should be.

Well, listen, I can't speak for every parent, but this seems like a decision that needed to be made. And as a parent with kids who will be in the TDSB for the foreseeable future, I'm glad that the province stepped in and I do hope that the knock-on effect is more resources that are sort of locked up in bureaucracy that can flow to the teachers and ultimately to the students. Paul Kalandra, Minister of Education for the Province of Ontario, thank you so much for

joining us on the Ben Mulrooney Show with this big announcement. We appreciate it and good luck, sir. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time today, Ben. All right, when we come back from the break, we are opening up the phone lines here on the Ben Mulroney Show. We wanna hear from you.

You've heard from the Minister of Education. You've heard what he had to say. Do you think putting supervisors in charge of these four school boards will improve education for your children, for our children? This is, I mean, the level of incompetence that I think was uncovered in these investigations surprised even me. And so this feels like a big swing, but hopefully it's going to yield the results that we as

parents want. We want teachers supported and we want our kids educated as best as we can. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. In our previous segment, we were fortunate enough to have the Ontario Minister of Education Paul Kalandra come on with a groundbreaking decision and announcement after a long investigation into school boards across this province that have been managing their affairs more like a clown car than a school board. It has been decided by the Ontario government that four boards, the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic

District School Board, Ottawa and Dufferin Peel Catholic will be taken over by the province. And they are going to be run essentially by, in one case, a policy and finance professional, a lawyer specializing in strategic oversight, lots of experience in governance, and another person is an auditor and chartered accountant. So they uncovered mismanagement, deficits, poor planning, sort of almost like a shell

game of finances where they were selling off assets like old schools to cover the budget shortfall. That's how mismanaged these boards were. And I want to ask you, do you think that the government coming in and taking over these school boards is a step in the right direction? Let's start with Tony. Welcome to the show, Tony. What do you think? Is this a good idea or not?

Hi, good morning, Ben. So I need to go by past historical performance metrics. You know what that means. So if you look at the Ontario province government, what they've done with Ontario Health at Home or the Linn Network, if you look at what's going on with Infrastructure Ontario, literally every expenditure budget that they've managed and they've taken ownership of is a mess. Our healthcare system is just as important as education. It's not more important,

yet there are literally tens of thousands of people across the province. Yeah, not getting what they need. Tony, I listen, I take your point. And it's absolutely fair in this day and age to cast your eye to any sort of government intervention into anything. And ask yourself, are they just going to make it worse? That's absolutely fair. But what do you think of the point that I made that the four people who will be taking over the responsibilities,

because in the case of the secular boards, those board members are gone. They're being sent home and they're not getting paid. And they're being replaced instead by, like I said, a policy and finance professional. There's also a lawyer, an auditor and chartered accountant, and somebody with a ton of experience in governance. These aren't government functionaries. These are... Okay, Ben.

Yes. What do you think of that? So, Ben, if they're allocating an All-Star Dream Team to resolve this issue and they succeed, then my question is why the heck are they not allocating the same professionals, the same capable people in other portfolios that require fixing? Yeah, Tony, listen, again, a great point, but perhaps this is that turning point where our eyes are open to how effective

people from the private sector can be in solving problems in more or less public, in the public sphere. This could become a best practice. I want to thank you for your call, Tony. I really appreciate it. I hope you have a great Canada Day. Who do we have now? We've got Mike. Mike, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Ben, big fan right now, big fan. Thank you. My question for you is, this is just what you see in the nice for you see the tip what you have down below is worth why do all the mismanagement of money only a and you know i hear all the

she was me then but i hear all the crying with the teachers have to pay for pencils stuff like that but we have to get a hold of the union and they are not that they're not we don't want another four, uh, 4% increase for the next three years every year for a different board. The other thing too, Mike, isn't it? Don't you think, Mike, don't you think that's a, a bridge we can burn when we get to it? Uh, cause yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yes. But there's, there's, there's a whole lot of, lot of under undercurrents that are going on with the school board.

The other thing too, back in the day, way back in the day, the principal had a budget for the school. I'm talking way back in the day. Why can't we get back to that where the teacher has a budget for equipment? No, no, no. Now they've got to have all the pictures for the schools that are made by famous Canadians. Where have we lost our way? Let's teach the kids.

The kids are not as intelligent anymore. Mike, I think what you're talking about is that story, I believe, in one of the Catholic school boards where they took a trip to Italy to buy thousands of dollars of art for the school. They could have gone down to Kensington Market or Amazon and gotten all that stuff shipped to them directly. So that stuff, I suspect because you've got these private sector people coming in with the expertise and governance and budgeting, they're going to come in and they're not going to allow for that anymore. One last question then. Will there be anybody on the school board that's going to have to be paid because they got let go? So Minister Kalandra said that for the secular

school boards, everyone is going home and they are stipend, as he called it, is being reduced to zero. And on the Catholic side, because the law is different, they are sticking around in some capacity. They have to answer to this person who's been put on top. And their stipend has been reduced by 75%. So they've gotten a public dressing down. And they have been neutered for lack of a better expression. And hopefully, these new additions at the top will present as the adults in the room and and and right the ship. We'll have to see. Thank you Mike for your call. Let's welcome what

do we have we got Alberto. Alberto thank you so much for calling in. Happy Friday. Hey happy Friday to you too Ben. Yeah I am a retired welfare worker for York Region and um... yeah i had my retired welfare worker for your greek in and uh... you know uh... i think it was about three four years ago the uh... provincial government for decided to take it over i just created more bureaucracy they hired more managers and you know every tax but the union but you know there's a people air middle management that's getting paid hundreds of thousands of

dollars and the front line staff have to put up with all the headaches and the middle management sit back and do absolutely nothing. Yeah. Collects back. Alberto, listen, I can't speak to the experience that you had, but this feels like they have a very specific mission to get the finances

of these school boards back on track, to peel away the muscle memory of incompetence and to restore the mission of the school boards, which is to ensure that teachers are supported and kids are educated. So I don't you tell me you tell me. Yeah, tell me one thing. Yeah. Okay.

Well, but you know what? I've been in social services for 35 years and i see these things happening all the time where they they take over for more efficiency and all that ends up happy as they hire more management to deal with with uh... can see all of the union let's say he's got a thousand members they gotta have like seven hundred managers doing absolutely nothing except collecting stats and pretending that they're they're more efficient. They are not making it more efficient. I'm telling you, when we went to, when the province took us over, the level of bureaucracy,

we had about two or three different levels of bureaucracy. People weren't getting their checks. Mistakes were made. Millions of dollars got passed out. Ironiously. The private sector isn't always the answer. People say they make it more efficient.

But what happens is that the private sector doesn't always always the answer. People say they make it more efficient. But what happens then? Alberto, Alberto, let me jump in for a second. Let's make this a conversation. Look, I'm sure that what you are reporting to me is entirely accurate.

I have no reason to doubt you. However, I'm an optimist in this moment and I'm choosing to listen to the words that you say that I take as fact, and I choose to believe that they have learned lessons from that because in this case, the mismanagement has been so bad. Now you talk about the unions who are going to insist on having X amount of people working.

I don't believe that that is something that's going to fly. You've got people here who are experts in governance and organization and management. They're gonna come in and say, okay, to the union, you want 10 people doing that job? I can tell you having just done a deep dive, it doesn't take more than two people to do that job. You wanna justify 10 people doing the job of two?

Forget it, those days are over. And the public, I believe, is gonna be on the side of those sorts of decisions. So I'm choosing to be bullish, I'm choosing to be on the side of those sorts of decisions. So I'm choosing to be bullish I'm choosing to be optimistic because the alternative is I mean a generation of kids who aren't educated Hey, I agree improvements have to be made but what I'm saying is consultants get paid for a reason Well, hey, I got a run because I you know what and we don't have time to take Kevin I'm very sorry. We don't have time to get to you.

But thank you to all of you who call us. I very much appreciate it. This is such an important conversation.