TDSB underfunding and Doug Ford’s “whole shebang”
If ever there was a fishing tournament for bait and switch, Doug Ford would win the new bass boat and big motor to go with it. He is the king. He knows he doesn’t have to make any sense – just get people mad about something else. Housing starts down? Fork over $225 million to the Beer Store, so that corner stores can sell beer and wine. A Charter challenge to the law that says it’s okay to move elderly patients to long term care homes they didn’t choose? Zero in on a Toronto District School Board field trip during which students attended the Grassy Narrows River Run in support of Indigenous people who have suffered for generations from mercury poisoning. Call it “disgusting” that some kids might have heard or even chanted pro-Palestinian slogans and promise to hold people accountable for this “disgraceful” activity.
As he said, students “should be in the classroom learning about reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic — the whole shebang.” But no, teachers “want to bring them down to a rally, a Palestinian rally, and it’s ridiculous.”
Ford no frills
This says a lot about Mr. Ford’s theory of education in Ontario, as it devolves into schooling stripped bare of frills like special education, outdoor centres, community access and basic maintenance of buildings.
Achieving even that is a struggle for school boards across the province. While the Ford government always claims it’s spending more and more on schools, it refuses to recognize the concept of inflation. So, according to Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives economist, Ricardo Tranjan, spending per student, adjusted for inflation, dropped $1 500 since 2018 when the Fordites promised to fix the devastation they said was wrought by the Liberals. In 2018-19 per-student-funding was $14 700 inflation-adjusted dollars; for the 2024-25 budget it’s $13 200. Simple arithmetic.
There’s more. For the past couple of years, Mr. Tranjan observes, the government has applied a “Planning Provision” – money that may only be used at the discretion of the Ministry of Education not school boards who might use it to plan for an upcoming budget. That chunk of funding amounts to $1.39 billion for 2024-25. It’s money the government can say it’s spending on students without necessarily spending it on students.
Small wonder that school boards across the province are crying poor. The Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB was $6.1 million short for the 2024-25 school year. The Thames Valley DSB cut 82 teaching and 17 early childhood education positions, along with support for speech, language and psychology as trustees said the board had been shorted $30 million by the Ministry. Many other boards are in a similar position. Halton’s board projected a $1.8 million deficit in its budget after cutting 94 positions and finding $10 million in so-called savings and efficiencies.
The Catholic school board in Sudbury is drawing $5.4 million from its reserves to cover funding gaps in statutory employee benefits and transportation, something the Dufferin-Peel Catholic DSB faced as it coped with a $39.8 million deficit. The Greater Essex County DSB had to consider cutting staff as it managed a $6.38 million deficit, partly the result of not receiving enough funding for special education and transportation. Closer to home the Toronto Catholic board reduced staff in response to its $66.5 million deficit which it called “structural in nature” – tied to government funding.
No wonder Doug Ford would rather tilt at windmills like bike lanes – a scourge on Escalade drivers everywhere.
Internment of the TDSB
Like other boards across the province, the Toronto District School Board is being interned in a financial hole that deepens every year. The Tories fired up their backhoes right away as they told the Board to cut $67.8 million dollars from its budget in 2019. This led to cuts to outdoor education, caretaking, international languages, school budgets, mental health supports for students and transportation. What ensued was a loss of 310 positions like learning coaches, guidance counsellors, principals and vice-principals, psychologists, social workers, speech and language pathologists, leadership staff and people who keep school buildings up and running. So, if you’re wondering why kids aren’t getting support for learning problems or schools are in bad shape, you only need to look here to get some history of the problem.
By 2023-24, the TDSB had to find $42.7 million in Ministry-mandated cuts. Like other boards it was shorter than usual for money because the Ministry didn’t pay the full tab for COVID-19 related expenses leaving the TDSB to find $69 million to ensure safety of students and staff. It also lost the Ministry’s Covid-19 funding and the hundreds of staff that went with it. By increasing fees for general interest courses, cutting central education staff, increasing online school enrolment and dipping into a fund called “Proceeds of Disposition” it was able to meet the Ministry mandate. It still carried a $15.1 million deficit.
Last June, during a 6 -hour Board meeting, Associate Director Stacy Zucker provided the clearest outline of its amazingly convoluted 2024-25 budget development:1
- The TDSB started with a projected deficit of $43.5 million early last spring
- Trustees approved budget reductions of $17 million by cutting central staff ($5 million), school maintenance operations ($5 million) and somehow promoting wellness to reduce sick leave costs ($7million). This brought the deficit down to $26.5 million.
- The Ministry released its Core education funding – formerly Grants for Students Needs – adding another $8.8 million to Board deficit. This was related to an $11.2 million funding cut from the Ministry that was meant to support destreaming and transition to secondary school. Its loss effectively cut middle school guidance staff. The deficit rose back up to $35.3 million
- Board staff proposed that $27.5 million from its Proceeds of Disposition fund be used to cut down the deficit to $7.8 million. Proceeds of Disposition (POD) refers to sale and leases of a school board’s real estate and is supposed to be spent on infrastructures expenses like building renewal.
- Staff found $4 million in operational savings
- Now the deficit was down to $3.8 million which the Budget Committee proposed could be balanced by further reducing staff absenteeism by half a day and charging families for repairs to computer devices provided by the Board to students.
- At the last minute, trustees moved to ask the Ministry if it could take another $500 000 from it Proceeds of Disposition to avoid having to remove the senior’s discount from general interest programmes they attend.
This situation has existed for 6 years and isn’t going to change. Like other boards the TDSB faces a built in or structural deficit because the Ford government won’t pay for increases in required statutory benefits like Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Employment Insurance (EI). It’s expensive to live in Toronto and the TDSB pays its staff more than what the province funds. Since amalgamation in 1998, it hasn’t been able to raise taxes to cover extra expenses. It can’t cut costs of operating underused schools by closing some of them because there’s a provincial moratorium on that; yet, there’s no longer a top-up grant to cover the added expense of running low-enrolment schools. Then there’s the matter of the unpaid Covid-19 expenses mentioned above. The Board is trying to climb out of a hole upside down with its hands tied behind its back.
As acting Chair Neethan Shan said during the June budget meeting: “we keep cutting off different parts of our limbs over the years.”
So yes, it’s completely in character for Doug Ford to rail on about kids attending a rally organized by Indigenous people of Grassy Narrows. While testing out his new charm offensive for a possible spring election, he’s also making it clear that if you’re looking for something other than the “3-rs” in education, don’t look for it in the public system.
What cuts look like in schools
Trustee Deborah Williams thinks schools need enough money to fund the programmes that have become part of their lives over the years, like librarians and educators to help students with special needs. Kids will grow up to be contributors to every aspect of society, “…they are literally the future and we want them to have a good foundation, to be able to be good citizens in every way.” The reality is, now that Covid-19 funding is gone, high school students are asking for soap and paper towels in washrooms – all in short supply due to “efficiencies” needed to balance the budget. Instead of discussing how to cut its budget, she wants to see a TDSB able to focus on fostering a sense of belonging in school through anti-hate and anti-racism measures while addressing the increase in anxiety around social media.
Trustee Alexis Dawson ties underfunding to a Tory plan to move to some kind of voucher or other 
privatized education system, by “underfunding public education so much that people will want to pursue other options and will want some form of private incentive or funding towards that.” She doesn’t believe that the Ford government understands how equity measures support basic education and worries that if the TDSB were ever to vote against a balanced budget, the Ministry might take over the Board as it did during the Harris years. If that happened she fears it wouldn’t support equity work like Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement. Programmes like that would just disappear. This makes it all the more important to promote the work the TDSB does regarding Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and how it supports literacy and math. Still, she has to contend with crumbling board buildings and fewer resources to fix them. Why not, Ms. Dawson says, consider schools as hubs of their community with more services like child care, community centres and public greenspace sharing the same space? She points out the example of new Jean Lumb P.S. near Fort York, which shares space with the Toronto Catholic DSB and hosts a community/recreation and child care centre along with a green roof and solar panels.
This view of the school as a community good rather than just a place for kids to be parked 10 months of the year has been touted for generations. But as Trustee Sara Ehrhardt notes, the promise of public education is missing. It has gone so long without sufficient revenue that it faces a crisis similar to that of “hallway medicine,” the very problem Doug Ford said he would cure when he defeated the Liberals in 2018. It’s going to take a combined effort from all levels of government to grasp broader problems of public health, treatment for autistic kids, child welfare, medical screening and so on. To bring school funding into the 21st century, there needs to be sustained increases in financing for new issues that young people face – like the learning losses that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead school boards not only struggle with education cuts, but those in other sectors: “As non-school supports are eroded, schools continue to be the fallback.” Children manifest those problems at school.
Along with Trustees de Dovitiis, Shan and Wong, Ms. Ehrhardt voted against the June budget. Unlike the Ford government, she doesn’t think schools exist just for students from kindergarten to grade 12. They serve the community and it deserves access. Schools need to be repaired and upgraded; the TDSB is billions of dollars behind in restoring buildings. Caretaking staff is “skeletal” with operations below a reasonable standard. As far as she is concerned, “I do not believe that my community elected me to carve out the function of these public buildings.”
Long term perspective
He has watched since the Harris government do its worst to mould education into a kindergarten to grade 12 education delivery system and not much else. John Weatherup is president of CUPE Local 4400 with about 12 000 education workers like early childhood educators, adult education teachers, caretakers and education assistants. Matters improved a bit under the Liberal government, but Doug Ford has cranked it back to the bare minimum since his election in 2018. Mr. Weatherup thinks that the Ministry of Education is actually trying to get out of early childhood education, viewing it as a frill. Fees for community use of schools are getting so high, they will be out of reach soon. Language programmes in Toronto and a centre for immigration have been downgraded, along with general interest and seniors programmes that used to be free.
Not only has the TDSB cut resources from schools he says, but it has also axed central administration who oversee schools and all their operations, so it’s almost impossible to govern the system: “Our board is in chaos…Management can’t respond (to issues) in any meaningful way so people are left fending for themselves.” Just considering special education needs, there is virtually no response to a massive increase in violence especially amongst very young kids in junior and senior kindergarten. He notes that a school might “…get an SNA ( Special Needs Assistant) running around to 8 classrooms.” It’s overwhelming but the Board can’t or won’t won’t employ the resources to help schools.
Bit by bit, he says, the work of CUPE 440 workers is becoming impossible. A single lunchroom supervisor who works for a little over an hour a day in hopes that it might lead to a job with more hours, has to watch over 100 students. Caretakers don’t have time to do the work they’ve been assigned. Between 7 and 9 a.m. when they get school ready for the day, they have to flush all leaded pipes, check the boiler and clear the schoolyard of dangerous items like needles. Night caretakers are each assigned 15 000 square feet to clean. The province pays more for cleaning its own buildings than it gives to schools with young people surely deserving an equal standard of hygiene. There are no rules about replacing staff who are away; the Board saves money by not filling empty positions, he adds: “The mental health of members across all of our units is becoming terrible.”
The TDSB school bus is running on fumes. It has no working funds in reserve and is drawing on its Proceeds of Disposition envelope to help cover deficits. TDSB spokesperson, Zoya McGoarty explained that the balance in this account was nearly $300 million at the end of 2023, but that “the majority of this amount is committed to current and future projects.” The TDSB has good ideas to face its problems of education, but without stable funding, they’re theoretical.
Doug Ford can twist reality all he wants as he attacks teachers for taking kids to his illusory “Palestinian rally.” The one sure thing is that the kids, whose families are trying to cope with his cuts to health, social services and education, still come to public schools and bring with them the inherent demands of their diversity and hopes.
- TDSB, Regular Board Meeting – June 19, 2024. Time 3:52:20