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The four boards have either continued to run deficits or failed to balance budgets this year, instead relying on multi-year plans or wanting to use funds from the sales of properties to get out of the red, which Calandra told the Star shows just how precarious their situations are.

“It’s gone on long enough,” he said in an interview. “These boards have run multi-year deficits with no plan to come back to balanced budget, despite the fact that both Ottawa and the TDSB (ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ District School Board) were trying to present balanced budgets at the last minute. Both of them — ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ in particular — have balanced budgets based on the sale of surplus assets,” which are funds intended to pay for school renovations and upgrades.

Boards, however, argue that even though funding from the province has increased, it has not nearly kept up with their actual costs — especially when inflation is factored in — nor covered mandatory increases such as employment insurance contributions. 

Supervision was unnecessary “given the meaningful steps the board has taken over the years to address its financial challenges” and an independent report confirmed “there was no financial impropriety on behalf of staff or the trustees,” said ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Catholic board chair Markus de Domenico, adding he was “shocked” by the move.

“Structural deficits of this scale do not arise overnight,” he added. “They are the result of chronic underfunding in key areas such as sick leave, statutory benefits and the high costs associated with operating under-enrolled schools, which boards are not permitted to close under provincial direction. These pressures are not unique to the (ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Catholic board) and are shared by many large urban school boards across Ontario.”

The ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Catholic board initially reported a deficit of $65.9 million, but found savings and reduced it to $48.5 million. It had been asking for ministry approval to apply $30 million in building sales to the remaining deficit, and had a multi-year financial recovery plan.

Calandra called the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board “just a complete disaster” with an ongoing deficit, depleted reserves, “trustees resigning and parents just in a fury over decisions that are being made.”

The Dufferin-Peel Catholic board “again, unwilling to really balance the budget, but also carrying historical bad decisions when it comes to long-term disability and managing it themselves … it only survives based on funding that the province gives it in advanced payments,” he said.

Calandra said while not all boards are in such trouble, the supervision of a few puts all on notice.

“I’m just, literally, done with trustees or boards of education that go on tangents, that work outside their mandate, that refuse to live by the funding model ,” he told the Star. “We have schools that are unsafe, teachers who are frustrated and students and parents who don’t feel that they’re getting the quality of education that $30 billion” should provide.

He said he’s frustrated with ineffective governance, “and I’m reviewing that as well.”

Weidong Pei, a trustee with ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ District School Board, welcomed the provincial clampdown, saying “it really has become abundantly clear to me that the (board) is dysfunctional. It’s crisis after crisis.”

Decisions are driven by politics, not data, he added, citing the replacement of merit-based admissions to specialty schools with a lottery system and the desire to rename three schools with ties to historical figures.

He said recent budget discussions highlight how “wholly dysfunctional” the board is because there were cuts to programs that will affect kids, but no cuts to senior administrators.

Calandra said for decades, governments have downloaded responsibility to school boards “to avoid owning issues, and that has to stop. Whether it’s curriculum, whether it’s safety in schools, whether it’s budgeting, it is time for us to take on that responsibility as a ministry and make sure that the system that we expect is what we deliver.”

He said supervisors will look at things such as unfunded programs, reducing bureaucracy or redeploying principals who aren’t working in schools, and if structural budgetary issues are found, they will also be addressed.

ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ school board pools are not provincially funded, an issue Calandra said he is sympathetic to because of their history in the city, “and where there’s a shortfall in our funding, if that model needs to change, then we’ll be able to do that.”

Both the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ boards and Dufferin-Peel have been placed under supervision under previous Conservative and Liberal governments, with ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ public in 2002, Dufferin-Peel in 2007 and ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Catholic in 2008.

In April, Calandra put the Thames Valley District School Board under supervision, saying Friday there’s been “incredible progress.” 

That means five boards are currently under provincial control, a number not seen before.

Kathleen Woodcock, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said that “trustees want the very best for students and view this as an opportunity to pause, reflect and rebuild together in the best interests of all learners.”

Her association “also looks forward to engaging directly with the supervisors to help surface and share strong practices from school boards across the province — practices the minister himself has acknowledged.”

Michael Bellmore, president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association, noted Calandra said “most boards across Ontario are doing the right thing” and that “we look forward to ongoing discussions with Minister Calandra and Ministry of Education officials regarding the unique circumstances of certain school boards, as well as challenges associated with rising sick leave costs, special education and student transportation funding.”

The province is spending $30.3 billion on education for the coming school year, $2 billion for school upgrades and $1.3 billion for new schools. 

The school boards’ association has said that per-pupil funding since the Ford government took power in 2018 has dropped (when adjusted to 2018 dollars), leaving a $693-million gap for the province’s 31 English public boards alone.

Calandra had sent investigators into the boards to examine their finances, and said ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ public trustees had rejected about half of all savings proposed by senior board officials, and had a projected $58 million deficit for 2025-6.

ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Catholic board Trustee Maria Rizzo wants to see how the province balances the books without affecting students and programs, such as international language instruction.

“If they think that they can do this better, let them try. Let them do their own dirty work,” she said. “They don’t give us enough money for special education and they don’t give us money for any of the Catholic programs.”

Rizzo said “I get paid a nickel an hour — it doesn’t hurt me. My problem is that the constituents I represent in my community won’t be able to come to me and I can’t address any of the issues.”

Chair de Domenico said for the province to “appoint a high-powered, high-priced lawyer to run a board with the idea of saving money is in itself ironic. It is not democratic. This is an attempt by the minister to take over the entire system and remove the public voice.”

He said the board was “caught up in this maelstrom of frenzy here to exert control over what should be a democratic institution.”

Meanwhile, Calandra is also pausing for one year curriculum updates that were to be implemented this fall, including in literacy, math and STEM in kindergarten and history in grades 7, 8 and 10 to give teachers additional time to become familiar with the material and create lessons.