Open Letter to TDSB supervisor, Rohit Gupta: why fire the director of education?
Good afternoon Mr. Gupta,
It’s high time for you to open that little door at the bottom of the Dark Tower, formerly known as the Toronto District School Board, come out and explain yourself. For half a year, after its elected trustees were arbitrarily suspended, you have run this public board by decree. In true autocratic fashion, you release your decisions without debate. You reversed trustees’ vote to reject the 2025-26 Special Education plan with its larger special education class sizes. You’ve rescinded their policies about renaming schools saying that this was an effort to provide “clarity” though it’s not clear what you meant by that. And what about cancelling a lottery system that enabled a broader cross-section of kids to get into specialized interest programmes? You don’t answer questions, don’t talk to the press: you don’t open a window to the families whose children attend the schools you supervise.
So, open it! The people paying your $350 000 per year salary deserve to know your cost-benefit analysis of hobbling local democracy.
And now, you and apparently Education Minister Paul Calandra, have just up and dismissed the newly hired Director of Education, Clayton La Touche. You didn’t even bother to announce it on the Dark Tower website. He just disappeared. Suddenly, there appeared, without a shred of explanation, an interim director in the form of accountant, Stacy Zucker.
Since organizations rarely fire a director after only 10 months on the job, your explanation that the board needed a “fresh start” is simply unbelievable. Since you are in the position to know, could you please explain what fresh start would necessitate firing an education director? Maybe “fresh” has acquired a new Ministry-approved meaning: unexplained, abrupt, and costly. On the other hand, could it be that Clayton La Touche was insufficiently compliant?
Could you confirm that Mr. La Touche was operating under a 4-year contract at a salary of $308 000 per year. If so, how do you plan to buy out his contract? Will this, like your salary be another financial burden for Toronto public education?
Will you be hiring a new director or will one be appointed by the Ford government? If you do plan to hire a director, would you please explain how this will work? Will it include an open call for applications? Will there be a vetting process to ensure that, as you seek this fresh start, applicants align with Progressive Conservative Party politics or are close to the Ford government? This approach has worked well for people seeking government favour over the past few years.
Mr. La Touche is described as being student focused and a strong supporter of equity in Toronto schools, an educator who, despite being new to the job of director, visited a west end ward three times during the last term of the 2024-25 school year as well as a memorial service for Mohamed Doumbouya, age 16, shot to death in 2024. In light of Ford government efforts over the years to underfund education and make it more difficult for schools to fulfill their equity roles in their communities, is Mr. La Touche’s firing indicative of the direction you and Minister Calandra plan to take regarding equity and student focus in schools?
Maybe this is beside the point in light of all the other decisions you’ve made about Toronto schools, but you took over from suspended trustees because the Ford government decided that they hadn’t sufficiently squeezed the board’s budget, though it was balanced as required. So, apart from reversing policies and wasting money by firing the director, what have you done about this? It’s time to shed light on what you have been doing and plan to do for the indeterminate future. Come out of the Tower, Mr. Gupta.
This isn’t your school board. So far it isn’t Doug Ford’s school board – though maybe his name will be tacked onto one of its buildings. It is the public’s school board and the public deserves answers – even more now, as the government works to sideline its voices.
Silence is the handmaiden of arbitrary decisions. Democracy requires transparency and debate.
School Magazine
