How the provincial takeover of an Ontario school board 13 years ago played out

Ontario’s new education law is meant to make it easier for the province to take control of school boards it says “fall off the rails.”

Education Minister Paul Calandra made that comment last week.

His Progressive Conservative government passed the Supporting Children and Students Act, also known as Bill 33. It then quickly received royal assent.

“I’ve made it very clear from the very first day I took office that I was not going to allow the system to remain the same, that I was going to do everything in my power to put school boards back on track,” Calandra said.

While the legislation is new, there were five school boards already under the control of the provincial government when it passed.

And in the Windsor area, supervision is a not-too-distant memory for one board.

In 2012, the then Liberal government appointed a supervisor to takeover the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board (WECDSB) because of a heavy and growing deficit.

The board had been in financial disarray for years, and failing to present a balance budget violated the Education Act and prompted the provincial oversight. 

Paul Picard was the board’s director of education at the time. He came into the role in 2010 when a lot of the deficit had already accumulated.

He says the supervisor quickly expedited and executed necessary tough decisions and cuts.

“You have trustees who are responsible to electors and … [who] want to get reelected. There’s some reluctance to make the difficult choices. And so at that juncture, I think the ministry stepped in to to provide assistance.”

The deficit came about, according to Picard, in large part because of cost increases and a high percentage of expenditures falling under collective agreements — things that are “untouchable.”

He says enrolment was also decreasing at the time negatively impacting the board’s cash flow.

Picard says administratively his team wasn’t shut out when supervisor Norbert Hartmann took the wheel.

However, that wasn’t the case for trustees.

“They were informed but they had no significant voting input to it. They could make their voices heard and they could listen to the constituents.”

Picard says more provincial input can also end up being a double-edged sword.

The ministry lifted its board supervision in the fall of 2013.

“On one side there’s going to be people saying … local autonomy begins to erode, but on the other side, to get in this constant cycle of deficit financing, it’s going to reach a critical point to where it is impacting … the most vulnerable.”

Trustee impact

Picard says he believes trustees don’t always have sufficient information available to them “to know what’s going on.”

“Even if they do, the influences on them politically … to be reelected in a small constituency makes them unwilling to very often make extremely difficult decisions.”

He says if and when there ends up being dysfunction within a trustee group, that can further exacerbate problems.

“You’re wasting a whole lot of time spinning your wheels in the mud trying to trying to get things done.”

Lisa Soulliere is the WECDSB trustee chair who was also a trustee back when the province took over the reins 13 years ago. 

She says the new education law feels much different than what the imposed supervision was in 2012.

Soulliere believes the same outcome to get out of a deficit position could’ve been achieved back then had the ministry dialogued with trustees in a “meaningful way” to understand contractual and financial issues at play.

“The supervisor was responsible for making decisions that we would normally debate and vote on,” she said. 

“Going through supervision was very difficult for trustees and administrators.  Student success and community relationships were not negatively impacted.”

Three trustees at Windsor’s public board have resigned within the last year citing different reasons.

Nancy Armstrong was the latest to step down. 

Among her reasons was what she deemed a review of “troubling information” from committee meetings about a controversial school naming process. 

Greater Essex Country District School Board (GECDSB) trustee chair Gale Hatfield referred to Bill 33 as “overwhelming,” when speaking to the media before it was passed.

“I’m afraid for the future of public education,” she told reporters.

But, she said, students and staff shouldn’t worry about ever being left behind. 

“That will never happen with or without trustees. I have faith in this board. I have faith in our administrators. I have faith in our teachers in the classrooms.”

‘Sweeping powers’ are ‘very concerning’

The NDP MPP for the riding of Windsor West says the province’s education minister has given himself “sweeping powers.”

Lisa Gretzky says it puts all school boards on high alert — while taking away the voice and abilities for parents and students locally to have a say in public education.

“That’s very concerning,” she said.

“It’s also a distraction because what the government is doing is trying to hide the fact from the public, hide accountability, for the fact that they have underfunded the public education system.”

Gretzky says the Progressive Conservative government is trying to make people believe there is rampant corruption or mismanagement at school boards all over the province — and that it’s untrue.

“It is the government that is putting many of these boards into deficits. If the minister is going to point fingers, he needs to be pointing them inward and looking at what the government is doing to actually address the problems that we’re seeing in education rather than trying to point the fingers at everybody else.”