Trustee candidates vs the Tories: backgrounder to the municipal election
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Support trustee candidate Deborah Williams

School Magazine  – 2026-09-25
Deborah Williams, an ETT-endorsed candidate, deserves your support in Ward 7: Toronto St. Paul’s, University Rosedale and Toronto Centre. She is an incumbent candidate who champions transparency and access to that public good we cherish as education.

Fordwatch 3: The saga continues

Susan Atkins  – 2026-07-20
Forgetting is a basic ingredient in any government’s recipe for holding on to power. That’s why School Magazine has kept a tab on the efforts of this government to act for itself and its friends.

Here is Fordwatch 3 and hopefully there won't be a Fordwatch 4. If you’ve forgotten headlines, stories and details, just click on the Fordwatch links for a reminder.

Updated to September 9, 2026

TDSB “modernizes” central administration with deep cuts

William Paul  – 2026-05-13
In the good old days of 2025, the Toronto DSB would have received its Ministry of Education (MOE) grant allocations. Trustees would already have spent time figuring out how to make do with the Tories’ magic shrinking budget. But now that’s all changed under the supervisor Rohit Gupta. Now, the TDSB makes the cuts and then Minister of Education Paul Calandra decides what’s going to happen next.

Teacher shortage myths enable social inequities

Andrew Wilkin  – 2026-05-05
The Ontario government is changing teachers’ education from a two year program to one year. This change is largely because there is supposedly a shortage of teachers. But data shows this is not the case.

Bill 101: the burn continues

William Paul  – 2026-04-24
In part 2 we can see more about how Bill 101 is about politics, not policy. Its lack of reason, rationale or plain common sense demonstrates how the Ford government sets out to solve problems without bothering to understand them.

Bill 101: burning down school boards

William Paul  – 2026-04-17
Bill 101 has nothing to do with putting students first. It’s about stripping local democracy, taking even greater control over what teachers do in the classroom and running education under the neoliberal creed: if it works in business it works with people.

The supervision budget blues

William Paul  – 2026-04-13
Supervision was supposed to clear up fiscal mismanagement and get recalcitrant school boards on the right page. Right now, it's hard to even find the book as school communities prepare themselves for cuts to staff.
NB: PLEASE LOOK AT THE END OF THIS ARTICLE FOR BREAKING NEWS ABOUT THE POSITION OF TRUSTEES ANNOUNCED JUST AFTER THIS WAS PUBLISHED.

We are all Minneapolis: Schools and teachers on the frontlines of fighting fascism

Editors of Rethinking Schools  – 2026-04-08
As 2026 began, the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Metro Surge, deploying more than 3,000 federal immigration agents to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area — triple the size of both cities’ police forces. As this issue went to print, the Trump administration announced it was drawing down this occupying force — but the devastation they caused, and the resistance they inspired has become a turning point in the fight against rising fascism in the United States.

Facing the dark tower: educators and the TDSB

William Paul  – 2026-04-01
Educators and their school communities really must organize and obstruct the increasing and arbitrary misuse of power at the TDSB. We need our local unions who defend their members’ rights. More than ever, we need to bolster them as they defend their schools and education workers from a school board in chaos.

Basket weaving: Ford and post-secondary funding

William Paul  – 2026-02-23
The Ford government has made it harder for lower income students to pay for post secondary education, just as Doug Ford himself tells them to stop picking ”basket-weaving courses” when the taxpayers are paying the education tab.

Black history, Black futures: What our students deserve

William Weaver  – 2026-02-18
From our friends at the Chicago Teachers Union:
Too often, the Black Panther Party appears in classrooms only through surface-level discussions of resistance or through pop culture portrayals that reduce the organization to its visual symbolism—black berets, leather jackets, firearms, and a militant image.

Depoliticizing pedagogies of comfort and instrumentalism

Henry Giroux  – 2026-02-14
Education is too often reduced to efficiency, training, metrics, and measurable outcomes, while pedagogy is judged less by its intellectual force than by whether it preserves student comfort. This emphasis focuses narrowly on whether students feel uneasy or anxious in response to challenging knowledge.

Power play at Bowmore PS: an exercise in intimidation

William Paul  – 2026-02-04
The school community at Bowmore PS was looking for support and fair collaboration from the Toronto DSB. What they got was 2 administrators moved, 2 teachers fired and 8 more suspended. The community is in shock.

Mr. Calandra: Return our trustees

William Paul  – 2026-01-30
The TDSB needs its trustees back. They and colleagues from four other school boards, were shown the door at the end of the 2025 school year. The Board is run by Ministry of Education (MOE)-appointed Rohit Gupta who issues periodic decisions as he keeps the community in the dark.