The supervision budget blues
Please note at the end of this article – breaking news about the destruction of a layer of government – just announced.
Paul Calandra’s claim that he’s putting students first is a joke. If he wanted to do that he would not have placed eight school boards under his control, keeping them in the dark as he cut off access from the community. Education has never been a priority of the Ford government which always places development and spectacle far ahead of anything to do with the public good. According to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) report, the Tories in their 2026 provincial budget, have cut education by 3.6 percent this year after underfunding schools to the tune $6.35 billion since they arrived on the scene in 2018. Children, Community and Social Services have been cut by 2.4 percent, the health sector by 0.5 percent and then there’s the sorry state of post-secondary education1. Even students not taking Doug Ford’s derided “basket weaving” courses can expect to pay more for their futures: tuition fees are rising by 2 percent. Also, students now receive only 25 percent of their tuition fees as a grant and 75 percent as a loan, basically reversing the ratio from previous years.
The joke is all that much darker for the school boards Calandra has placed under supervision since the end of June 2025. This time of year, trustees would normally be getting information about the amount of provincial grant they could expect to receive along with enrolment and staffing projections. That’s not happening for those eight boards, because, of course, there aren’t any trustees to receive, evaluate or critique such information. Still, Thames Valley DSB is warning of cuts to all departments especially Special Education. Ottawa Carleton DSB is looking for another $11.5 million to deal with its deficit. Toronto Catholic DSB’s supervisor, Frank Benedetto has ordered cuts to international language instruction, busing schedule changes and a phase-out of a reading support programme for young students.
Sadly, it’s the TDSB that deserves special mention here for the complete melt-down of its budget process. Last week Toronto Today reported that, due to a lower projected enrolment of 5000 students for 2026-27, the Board would be cutting 483.5 elementary and 123 secondary teacher positions – a total of about 607 jobs. In the elementary panel, this includes a loss of about 253 classroom teachers, 72 ESL teachers and, most significantly 145 learning opportunities positions. These are extra teachers assigned to schools in parts of the city that have the greatest challenges concerning income, social assistance, higher education and the existence of two-parent families. By the way, that figure drops from 145 to 0 teachers.
This information was provided to Elementary Teachers of Toronto (ETT) and Ontario Secondary School Teachers, (OSSTF) District 12 by Mark Ellis Executive Officer, People and Culture. But it’s at odds with another figure provided by TDSB media communications head, Ryan Bird who puts the total number of lost positions at 289. So, why the difference? According Bird, 3 000 fewer students enrolled for the 2025-26 school year, so fewer teachers were hired. This was news to anybody watching, like ETT president Helen Victoros, who would normally be in a position to know if the Board had hired several hundred fewer teachers.
This is all pretty confusing and more than a little disconcerting since we’re talking about people’s jobs and the access to teachers that kids are going to have. How many fewer teachers were hired in 2025-26 in response to the lower enrolment? Was that lower enrolment figure shared with anyone outside Board administration? Is the claim “5000 fewer students” enroling this year in addition to the 3 000 for 2025-26?
No answer so far from a school board that operates under a cone of silence. These would be the kind of questions trustees would be asking if they were allowed anywhere near the boardroom, had access to information and a way of communicating with their constituents.
To Trustee Michelle Aarts, it looks like Gupta has decided to cut any extra staff in order to meet Ministry of Education’s (MOE) budget demands. But as far as she knows, nothing has been shared about the coming budget. Principals are required to discuss enrolment and staffing with their school communities, but can’t do that. Board staff apparently aren’t allowed to bring up concerns about equity or learning opportunities as part of the staffing equation. None of this is clear because no one from the Board is offering any information.
It seems that Calandra has a death wish for the TDSB inasmuch as he’s directing it to run aground. Gupta has already raised special education class size caps. He removed them entirely from regular classes; they had been put in place years ago to ensure that elementary classes would be no larger than 32 kids. Two weeks ago, Board administration announced that it would be cutting 40 vice-principal positions – 28 of them due to the loss of one-time pandemic funding and the rest to declining enrolment. On Friday, again citing lower enrolment, it said that it planned to axe 186 school support workers. These include people like office staff, safety monitors and lunchroom supervisors. Lunchroom supervisors?! Calandra, Gupta et al ought to spend at least one lunch hour supervising kids in the lunchroom.
When you take such a swipe at a school system, without considering the implications on staff, students or the community in general, the effect spreads; you can’t unstart this fire. The interacting elements that hold schools together are barely able to withstand the stress on them now as significant functions break down: special needs kids being sent home because they can’t be managed in the classroom, staff having to file grievances in order to get the sick leave to which they are entitled by contract, teachers summarily fired or suspended, important schools for young people with exceptional requirements – squeezed of enrolment so they’ll have to shut down.
Trustee Debbie King asks what happened to equity of opportunity when a board as diverse in needs as the TDSB eliminates the people needed to sustain that ideal:
“The latest cuts under Ministry supervision are a direct erosion of public education in Toronto, with the deepest impacts falling on working-class communities. Reductions in teachers, support staff, and targeted funding will widen disparities that many students are already navigating every day. When schools lose educators, office staff, lunchroom supervisors, and safety monitors, students lose consistent support—both in the classroom and in the relationships that help them feel safe, seen, and able to learn.
These impacts are not evenly distributed. Families without the means to access tutoring, afterschool programs, or private supports will face greater barriers, and students already navigating marginalization will feel these losses first and most acutely. At the same time, these cuts eliminate stable, community-based jobs—roles largely held by women and racialized women. In a city where poverty and housing instability already disproportionately affect working-class and racialized families, these losses further deepen financial strain and inequity.
This is what divestment looks like in real terms: fewer supports in schools, greater strain on families, and inequities that continue to widen across our city.”
This just in: Education Minister Paul Calandra just announced big boot changes to governance of school boards across the province. Under his new Putting Student Achievement First Act School boards will still have trustees – but only to a maximum of 12 no matter how big they are. So smaller boards and huge ones like Toronto with 234 000 students will have a maximum of 12 trustees.
Trustees will work for $10 000 per year under the Calandrian model of democracy. They’ll have limited discretionary spending.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Education that was paying supervisors at a rate of $350 000 per year will be establishing 2 new undoubtedly high-paid roles: The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who would have a business background and replace the current role of Director of Education along with a new Chief Education Officer (CEdO) to advance “student achievement and success.”
Trustees would lose one of their few powers: to fire their CEO since “this would help prevent trustee reprisals or dismissals of school board leadership while they are carrying out their responsibilities.” Calandra must have been thinking about his firing of the TDSB director of education last fall.
The CEO will “provide confirmation of certain trustee resolutions or motions” like those concerning finances in order for them to take effect. Budget development will be led by the CEO with disagreements referred to the Minister for a decision.
CEOs of all English language DSBs will ratify central agreements between the province and education workers. CEOs will also ratify local agreements.
The Ministry will also tighten its grip on what learning resource teachers may use: “mandate the use of approved learning resources in classrooms across the province”
All of this is based on the poorly substantiated claims by Calandra over the past year that school boards have mismanaged funds, run deficits, diverted money from classrooms and spent money on “fine dining restaurants and high-end hotels” – very much in the manner of the Progressive Conservatives, notorious for their cronyism as evidenced in the Green Belt scandal and Highway 413 debacle. Where this was true, the Ministry had options to deal with individuals.
In reality the Tories have done little more than cut funding to schools as the grasped greater control of them.
BTW -The Ontario PCs are holding a $1,000-per-person fundraiser in Scarborough later today.
- These figures have been adjusted for inflation.