School boards under supervision: Paul Calandra wants to swear in trustees but give them no power

Paul Calandra has a got himself into a spot. Recently, he interfered with the 2026 trustee elections in Ontario school boards currently under his Ministry’s supervision. He postponed school board meetings in which successful candidates would be sworn in as trustees. He didn’t explain why he was doing this. It’s just the way things are under the democracy-averse Ford government.

But then he realized something. The Tories don’t control freedom of speech or association. That includes trustees who have just been elected to public office and want to meet with their constituents. Some of them like Maria Rizzo at the Toronto Catholic Board have been talking about holding community meetings in places like churches or libraries! Good God! What would happen if they spoke to constituents aside from any government control? It would be going rogue! Acting without constraint! It would be acting like the Tories!

As Calandra told the Toronto Star: “…it became immediately clear to me that some of these elected trustees immediately recognized they could do things and they would not be subject to the code of conduct, and they would not be under the integrity commissioner’s purview.”

God forbid; the Tories certainly don’t want trustees anywhere to “do things” but especially in the eight boards under supervision. They might hold town hall meetings where they highlight awkward questions like: What’s going on in our school board? What happened with all the cuts and changes made without public consultation?

Calandra is grappling to control the situation, but he wants things both ways. He wants trustees to be sworn in so he can use the Ministry-regulated Code of Conduct to lean on potential miscreants whose speech might be interpreted as using “…board resources for any purpose other than the business of the board.” But he doesn’t want them to have any power, so he won’t let school boards call their important first meetings. This is the one in which board chairs are elected. It sets the stage for trustees to discuss the business of the board, ask questions of administrative staff, make resolutions and do the rest of what is normal at all levels of government.

Re-elected Toronto DSB trustee Alexis Dawson explained that being sworn in acknowledges that trustees have an official title, a platform that enables them to advocate for children and families. She also pointed out a fundamental flaw in Calandra’s plan to control but not enfranchise trustees in boards he’s not finished supervising: “Calandra has indicated that the reason he wants to swear us in is to have us follow the Code of Conduct. But without a first meeting and being able to elect a chair and vice-chair it makes the Code of Conduct inoperable.” There’s no official board to enact it.

Calandra is making it clear that he wants his control to be the same as it was when he put school boards under supervision. Duly sworn trustees were dismissed without cause. They had no power or access to their boards. They weren’t allowed to visit schools in their constituencies, talk to parents and staff – at least officially- or use board resources to do their work. They lost their measly salaries. Calandra never explained why trustees needed to be treated so badly while Ministry and board bureaucrats sorted out financial problems.

When people forget, autocrats win. So, it’s worth recapping what happened at some of these boards. Sixteen months ago, Calandra assigned educationally unqualified supervisors to take over the Toronto, Toronto Catholic, Dufferin-Peel Catholic and Ottawa-Carleton Boards after the Ministry of Education sent investigators to look at their finances. Calandra’s oft-repeated claims of boards’ financial mismanagement just weren’t true. Auditors made it clear they weren’t concerned about that but about ongoing and future budget deficits leading to a situation in which boards might be unable to post a balanced budget.

School boards in Ontario must post a balanced budget every year. All of them turned in balanced budgets for the 2025-26 school year. But it wasn’t easy; these boards were trying to keep up with inflation and habitual Ministry underfunding by selling assets, cutting teachers, closing programmes, hiking fees and so on.

Since the Tories took office in 2018, the gap between inflation and what they spend on education resulted in a funding drop of  $6.5 billion. In a recent article, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) researcher, Ricardo Tranjan noted this means that more schools need major repairs, boards are on the hook to cover special education needs for which they are underfunded; class sizes have gone up and there are fewer staff in schools despite higher enrolments. Also, 41 of 72 boards projected budget deficits in 2025-26, compared with eight in 2018-19.

That didn’t matter. Paul Calandra put eight boards under his direct supervision and kept them in the dark. He certainly didn’t want trustees complaining to the press about fundamental changes he was making, not just to boards’ finances, but to governance, relationships with their communities and the nature of public education itself. Supervision was never just about money; it was about a radical change in public education, government accountability and local democracy.

Since then, supervisors rarely meet with local parents or community groups; they issue decisions posted online. Trustee, Maria Rizzo says “…they don’t understand what’s going on.” Issues are swept under the carpet and decisions made behind closed doors. The results don’t look positive. She points to the 77 international language instructors who lost their jobs last spring. The board’s supervisor also cut a special remedial reading programme and even changed bell times. The TCDSB has a current deficit of $39 million.

The Ottawa Carleton DSB still posts a deficit of $3.5 million despite cutting school administration costs to supervisory officers. Local MPP and NDP Education Critic, Chandra Pasma says there is more to the story; the supervisor also trimmed funds for textbooks, classroom resources, office staff, custodians and trades people. Twenty-one additional education assistants claimed to have been added to board classrooms were redirected from special education classes that had been cut. The Toronto DSB closed outdoor education centres, eliminated 289 teaching positions including 150 attached to the highest needs schools in the board. It downsized its equity department and shuttered its Heritage Month committees. It posts a $15 million deficit for the 2026-27 school year. These are just a few examples of changes made by Paul Calandra’s supervisors.

It’s time to lift the blinds and let the light shine on these eight school boards. Calandra’s efforts to silence trustees elected by citizens across the province is an example of the autocratic meddling in electoral processes we’re seeing under fascism in the United States. As Toronto NDP MPP, Chris Glover says: “Trustees should be sworn in and assume the duties and responsibilities that we elected them to fulfill. Anything less is an attack on our democratic rights.”

Trustees can always set up  town hall meetings, meet with parents, educators and anyone else concerned about what happens in our schools. If doing so is an act of defiance, so be it.