The Current - Should school boards be a thing of the past?

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

With Ontario considering getting rid of elected trustees and school boards, questions are being raised about the role of boards. Across Canada, there isn’t a clear answer with some provinces moving to eliminate boards, and others fighting to keep them. We look at the options, and what the research says is the best approach to help kids learn.

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better resources for teachers, and give parents certainty, and if that means eliminating trustees, then I'm going to do it. The product he's talking about is education. Ontario's Minister of Education says big changes are necessary. In that province, six school boards, including those for Toronto, Ottawa, and London have been taken over by the province, and the government has not ruled out eliminating school trustees altogether. This move is not sitting well with some parents. I'm just concerned that we're not going to have anywhere to funnel our greater voice and concerns, and especially with a trustee like ours, he's been so engaged and educating us.

It's going to be concerning to see how we're going to do this without him. We don't need fresh starts. We actually need funding in our publicly funded education system. That would be a fresh start for me as a parent. My trustee is a mom in my community. She is somebody that I see in the yard and who I have on speed dial. So when you cut her out, you are cutting up my voice and my kids' voices. All that said, Ontario's Minister of Education, Paul Calandra, says something has to change.

The ministry needs to step up to the plate more so than it has over the last 40 years. We have to stop downloading responsibility to trustees who neither have the authority to tax or the expertise to undertake some of the things that we're asking them to do. It is not the first, nor likely will it be the last time that a province has decided to overhaul school boards. Nova Scotia moved to eliminate its English school board trustees in 2018. Quebec did the same for the French board trustees in 2020, but on Prince Edward Island, a move to ditch school boards was later reversed. As part of our ongoing series, looking at the state of public education in this country,

we are asking what the best approach is to running our schools. Sachin Maharash is an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy, and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa. This is with Mean Studio. Good morning. Good morning. What exactly is the role of a school board, as you understand it? Well, there are multiple roles. So a school board allows local communities to have a voice in the way that their schools are run.

And it was thought that in doing so, they would help increase the social ties that bind communities together. But they also allow some sort of customization of education across a province so that schools can be tailored to the concerns of local communities. And the role of a trustee? What does a trustee do in that mix? Well, they're a local representative. So they hear concerns from their constituents and bring that to the governance of the school board. And they serve as a local check on the education bureaucracy. So a lot of times when students or parents have concerns at their local school, depending on the size of the school system, sometimes those concerns aren't addressed in a time. timely fashion. And we've built large school systems over the last several decades. And so having a

local advocate to kind of keep an eye on the way the school system is functioning is part of the role of an elected trustee. Education is a provincial responsibility. What are the different approaches across this country in terms of how school boards operate? Well, as you mentioned, there have been several moves to eliminate elected school boards. What's interesting to note is in most of those cases, those changes have been reversed. So even prior to Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick eliminated elected school boards in the 90s and then brought them back in the form of district education councils. But in general, most schools in Canada are governed by some sort of elected school board apparatus. What is your understanding as to, in Ontario, why the Minister of Education

is not just taking over the six boards and appointing a supervisor to oversee them, but there has been musing as well, but perhaps getting rid of trustees, getting rid of the board itself. Well, the reason we've seen this move in several provinces is that school boards are often viewed as impediments by provincial governments in terms of implementing their education policies because they're this intermediate, intermediary level of governance that are locally elected. And so sometimes when provincial governments are trying to implement their visions of education, they receive pushback. And because these boards are elected, they have some democratic, legitimacy. We've seen that here in Ontario. When this current government was first elected,

one of the first things that tried to do with respect to education was change the sex ed curriculum. And in kind of a high-profile dispute, the Toronto District School Board pushed back and said that they weren't going to implement this new curriculum because they felt it would violate their commitments to the human rights of their students. And these dynamics typically play out when there's a conservative government in power provincially, and the major urban centers are usually places that haven't voted for that government. And so there's a political tension there between these elected school boards and major centers, like, say, Toronto, Ottawa, and a conservative government provincially.

And so I think that's part of the reason you're seeing a move in this direction. I mean, one of the reasons why the Ontario government is talking about this is around financial mismanagement. There are these stories of trustees spending 100, $50,000 to go on a trip to Italy, $40,000 to take people to a Blue Jays game. Does that not raise eyebrows about where money is going? I think that was the pretense for what is currently happening right now. Those are real stories. Those are real stories, but the government ordered audits into several school boards

who'd be accused of financial mismanagement. And what the government's own audits found was that there wasn't really any financial mismanagement going on. Instead, what was happening is that school boards were being tasked with funding education services, but weren't receiving enough funding from the provincial government. So in Ottawa, for example, the Ottawa School Board was spending something like 20% more on special education services for students than they received from the province. And a lot of this is not really within their control. And so since then, you've seen other moves from the provincial

government in the school boards that have been taken over that have nothing to do with funding. They passed, the Ontario government passed Bill 33, which requires school boards to bring back police officers in schools. It restricts what school boards can name or rename schools. That's a power that is now in the hands of the Minister of Education. The reason that was done was because there was concern that schools that were named after historical figures were being changed that upset some conservative people in the province. And then if you look at some of the changes that have been taking place in Toronto and Ottawa, there are things like, changing the admissions to specialize schools, changing the boundaries in Ottawa. And both of those things were done to make enrollment more equitable. And so a lot of these changes that are being

put into place actually have nothing to do with funding and have more so to do with implementing a more conservative vision of education and schooling. There's a current trustee with the Toronto district school board who wrote an opinion piece for the Toronto Sun saying that school boards and trustees have outlived their purpose. He said that few Ontarians can name their trustees, voter turnout in trustee elections often struggles to reach even 10%. And far too often meetings are consumed by ideological debates and symbolic motions that have nothing to do with reading, math, or student well-being.

Does he have a point? I think that reflects the view of certain groups of conservatives. He's actually a trustee. Yeah, in Toronto and who was elected on, that basis. And if you look at the changes that I just mentioned, that the supervisor put in place to change the enrollment into specialized schools, that was something that trustee and a couple other trustees opposed, but they were in the minority politically. And so I think if you're someone with a more conservative view of education in a progressive place like Toronto, you welcome what is being done

because it aligns with your vision of education. But part of the way Democratic systems work is that, you know, we have these processes where we disagree about things and decisions are made. And just because you disagree with the decision doesn't necessarily mean that a higher body can come in and kind of reverse what is being done. Take the politics out of it. I mean, what does having school trustees or not mean for how kids do in school? Well, the actual form of governance has a indirect link to how students perform academically, if we're talking about things like test scores. But I think beyond its impact on test scores, we need to think about just what type of system do we want. It's kind of like if you look at the relationship between

democratic governance and like economic output, you can have, you know, really good economic output with less democracy, but I think having democracy is good in and of itself. Even if most people couldn't name their school trustee, they have, you know, the voting record director or the the turnout is something like 10%. Is that a true reflection of what the people want? Well, I mean, I don't think that's true in Ontario. The voter turnout in school board elections is similar to municipal elections. And I think if you stop the average person on the street,

they probably couldn't name most of their elected representatives at all level of government. So I think we have an issue with, you know, democratic engagement writ large. And school boards are no exception to that. Is there any jurisdiction that has. found in this country that has found a model that works. This is about governance and how to ensure that what is happening in the schools is operating at the highest level that it can and that people feel that they have a voice in there, but also that I guess governments feel as though their priorities are being addressed. Is there any jurisdiction that's figured out how to make this

work? There's no one best governance model. I mean, in British Columbia, they have a co-governance model between the provincial government and school boards that I think tries to balance some of those tensions. But like similar to our discussion about, you know, democratic systems, each system has its own advantages and disadvantages and there's tradeoffs in any configuration. But again, I think it is telling that in the provinces that have gotten rid of them, there have been moves to bring it back. Even in Nova Scotia, after they got rid of their elected school boards, the current government ran on a pledge to restore them. And I think that, tells you that they serve an important function and it's really hard to run schools centrally out of a provincial capital, especially in a large province like Ontario.

Without not just parental involvement, but somebody for the parents to go to, to have a way into that system. That's right. So even the Toronto District School Board has been taken over for a while now. I was at a meeting a couple of months ago at the neighboring Durham District School Board where trustees there has said they've been increasingly getting calls from parents. Toronto who have nowhere to turn to. And so I think when elected school boards and trustees are no longer there, parents and communities do end up feeling that loss. Satchan, thank you very much. You're welcome. Sassan Maharaj is an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy, and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa. He was with me in our Toronto studio. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m.

at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.