Ontario’s Education Minister plans to limit the role of school board trustees in a raft of proposals that are sweeping, but fall short of his earlier musings about eliminating the positions.
Paul Calandra has tabled a bill that would cut the number of trustees at the Toronto District School Board nearly in half, diminish trustees’ budget responsibilities at English-language boards, and mostly remove their role in central bargaining.
But he says trustees could face little work if some of the public boards remain under provincial supervision after upcoming elections this fall.
“A fundamental thing here is I wanted to ensure that we removed the distractions that come from trustees from the system. The new roles of a trustee will be significantly reduced from what it was before.”
“If the board is still under supervision, trustees who are elected in October will not be returning to a governance function. They will not return to a governance function until we have decided that they are in a position to do so in a fashion that the board is put on the right path.”
We have contacted both the Hastings Prince Edward District School Board and the Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic District School Board for comment from their board chairs and directors of education.
