Trustees at Toronto’s public school board are “deeply concerned about chronic underfunding” and are calling on the province for more money.
“We have a crisis in public education system, and we want to address this together,” said Neethan Shan, chair of the pc28District School Board, which is facing a projected deficit of $58 million for the 2025-26 school year.
“A significant funding shortfall is continuing to threaten our ability to provide high-quality education,” Shan told a press conference Wednesday, flanked by about a dozen trustees.
“The choice is very clear for the province right now: Will it choose to continue the current path and keep underfunding our schools and ignoring the actual educational needs of all of our children? It has another choice. Will it course-correct itself and make the necessary changes to the funding formula to properly invest in our students’ needs?”
The TDSB says it’s grappling with significant financial challenges, including a $1,500 shortfall in per-student provincial funding when adjusted for inflation; unfunded increases in statutory benefits (Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance); teacher salaries that are higher than ministry funding benchmarks; and the province’s moratorium on school closures.
Education Minister Paul Calandra has warned the TDSB to balance its books or risk being taken over by the province.
In late April, Calandra announced he was sending investigators into several boards to — including Toronto’s Catholic and public boards — and taking over Thames Valley District School Board. The investigators, who haven’t yet been appointed, are to report back by May 30 with recommendations.
Last week, TDSB staff presented trustees with options to balance the books, which include closing pools, axing aquatics instructors, eliminating the itinerant music program and its instructors, and changing outdoor education. That prompted public outcry.
Earlier in the day Wednesday, Calandra told reporters he wants the board to get back to “fiscal responsibility,” but urged it to balance the budget by looking at other avenues.
“They should not do it on the back of students, they should not do it by firing teachers, and they should not do it by closing down pools ... I would never allow them to do anything that hurts students in the classroom.
“I encourage them to look at their books. If there is something that you can do that doesn’t impact classroom education, then work with the investigative team.”
The ministry, however, does not fund pools, aquatics instructors or itinerant music instructors, which are professional musicians who enrich the music curriculum.
When asked about the comments, Shan said a few months ago the board received a ministry letter saying swim programs aren’t part of core programming for kids in kindergarten to Grade 12.
“There’s often double-talk on some of these things, where we hear one thing in public forums and another thing coming through letters,” said Shan, adding trustees value swimming pools, outdoor education and music programs.
At Queen’s Park, NDP Leader Marit Stiles, a former TDSB trustee, told reporters, “The minister of education wants to, as always, download decisions onto the school boards that are a result of his own funding cuts — $1,500 per student less funding means cuts for boards all across this province.
“To balance these budgets, they’re having to make cuts, and it is students and their families that pay the price,” she told reporters. “That minister doesn’t want to take responsibility for the fact that kids in the GTA are going to no longer learn how to swim — a life-saving skill — because of his government’s decisions.”
Earlier this week, reporters asked Calandra about per-pupil funding and he said “funding has gone up every single year that we’ve been here to, literally, historic, historic levels.” And about the province not fully covering statutory benefit increases, he noted that “multiple boards across this province are not only balancing their budget, but have surpluses.”
“They have a responsibility to be at balance, full stop,” he said Tuesday. “They’ve been running multi-year deficits, and I expect them to be not only at balance, but chart a path to multi-year surpluses.”
In the legislature last week, Calandra accused the board of attacking students and teachers by recommending pool closures and ending the music program, rather than cutting “the record number of superintendents who are littered all over the Sunshine List” and .
A board document called “TDSB Budget: Myth vs. Fact,” described Calandra’s comments in the legislature as “uninformed, inaccurate and insulting to the students, parents and staff we represent.”
It notes that senior staff costs have been reduced; and the sick leave plan — staff can take 11 days at full pay and 120 at 90 per cent pay — is within the control of the province, not local boards.
It also says “severe underfunding” across the sector is creating proposed deficit budgets in 42 of the province’s 72 school boards.
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