Depending on who you ask, the Ford government’s decision to place the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ District School Board under supervision — stripping its elected trustees of their authority — is either a much needed solution to a long-standing problem or an “anti-democratic” move that silences parent voices.
On the last day of school last month, the province took control of four Ontario school boards, including the TDSB and the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Catholic board, accusing them of financial mismanagement for continuing to run deficits or failing to pass balanced budgets. Boards argued that they have tried to address their financial challenges while dealing with underfunding from the province.
This is not the first time the Ontario government has stepped in to take over the TDSB or other school boards — nor is it the first provincial government to step into school board affairs. Governing bodies in Quebec and Nova Scotia have curtailed school board trustee elections in recent years. Nova Scotia’s move, which affected the French-speaking school board, had the support of the public, while in Quebec, the province’s push to give more governing power back to individual schools faced widespread pushback.
Here’s what you need to know about the usual roles of school board trustees, and what has changed since the Ford government took charge.
What do school board trustees usually do?
The ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ District School Board’s 22 elected trustees have two primary roles.Â
First, they are responsible for setting school board policies and priorities, as well as overseeing an annual budget process. They are also meant to serve as representatives of parents and students, whether by bringing up concerns during board meetings or using their office to resolve issues at individual schools.
But with the board under provincial supervision, trustees have been stripped of their power. As previously reported by the Star, trustees cannot issue updates to their communities, access administrative offices or use their board email accounts to communicate with constituents. The province is also now tasked with setting TDSB’s annual budget and policies.
How are trustees chosen?
Trustees are elected for a four-year term during municipal elections alongside mayors and city councillors.
This means that the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ District School Board’s 22 trustees are all up for election next year.
Trustee elections tend to have low voter turnout. In the city’s 2022 municipal elections, some trustees received as few as 3,000 to 8,000 votes compared to city councillors from similar wards who earned well over 15,000 votes.
Low voter turnout in school board elections led governing bodies in Quebec and Nova Scotia to change how boards are formed.
In Quebec, the province passed a bill in 2020 to replace school boards with non-elected school service centres. (English school boards are still in place after a legal battle.)
Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia, the provincial Utility and Review Board approved a plan to reduce the number of school board members provincewide to 13 from 18 last year.
How do trustees feel about the government stripping them of their powers?
“I think the removal of the function of a trustee, the removal of the access between the public and the (TDSB), it’s incredibly anti-democratic,” said Debbie King, a parent and trustee for Ward 7 Parkdale-High Park.
As a trustee, King said she has helped facilitate a Tibetan cultural summer camp for students in her ward — which includes the Little Tibet neighbourhood — and connect TDSB staff with a non-profit to work directly with young people at a school following an instance of youth violence last summer.
She said neither of these initiatives would have been possible without her ability to liaise between community members and the TDSB.
“They’re losing that real time moment to connect, but I also think they’re losing the long-term impacts that we can have through our advocacy.”
With trustees no longer able to respond to constituent emails — they now have to forward them to the director of education — trustee Alexis Dawson expects many parent and student complaints to go unanswered.
“We’ve been instructed to forward all of those emails to a particular email address and we have no idea what happens to them,” she said. “With the current resources of the TDSB, it would not be possible for people to receive meaningful responses.”
How have some parents responded?
Not everyone is sad to see TDSB trustees sidelined, however.
Michael Danishevsky and Aaron Kucharczuk, who are both parents, told the Star in separate interviews that trustees have seemingly lost focus on the education and needs of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ students — although they pointed to different causes.
For Danishevsky, the issue lies in what he believes is a push by the board to reduce the size of specialized programs, like , to make “every school as average as it can possibly be — and I find that goes against the goals of an education system.”
Meanwhile, Kucharczuk believes trustees are trying to reflect the interest of their constituents, but that all of those voters are not necessarily parents.
“What their constituents want and what parents want are not perfect Venn diagram,” he said.
He thinks trustees should only be responsible for managing the TDSB’s budget and land assets, and leave decisions that impact what goes on in the classroom to the board’s , which he serves on.
While scrutiny of trustees is fair to an extent, Myer Siemiatycki, a professor emeritus from ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Metropolitan University who specialized in municipal politics, cautioned against using these concerns as a reason to call for the complete elimination of school board trustees.
“Has the school board gotten itself caught up in controversies over the years? Has it generated criticism? Yes,” he said. “But can you name a provincial government or a federal government that hasn’t angered the public and that hasn’t created dissent and disagreement? I don’t think so.”
Neither Danishevsky nor Kucharczuk said they know what the TDSB being placed under provincial supervision will entail, but said they welcome the decision because change is needed.
“What I wouldn’t want to see happen is (the province) take over and (the board) just continue to languish,” Kucharczuk added. “If it just continues to be the same, then what have they accomplished other than silencing constituent and parent voices?”
Clarification — July 11, 2025
This article has been updated to clarify that a governing body in Nova Scotia stepped in to curtail the power of the province’s French-speaking school board.
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