Chair Claims Oversight is a Distraction from Funding Issues

The chair of a school board recently taken over by Ontario’s minister of education is defending the management and finances of the board, saying the supervision is a “smokescreen” to distract from provincial underfunding.

Education Minister Paul Calandra announced Wednesday that he was putting Peel District School Board, which oversees schools in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, under supervision due to a plan to lay off 60 teachers and repeated budget deficits.

Peel is the seventh board placed under provincial supervision since Calandra became minister last year, and he has also given the York Catholic District School Board two weeks to make a case for avoiding the same fate.

Peel board chair David Green says the deficits had always been covered in the past by dipping into the board’s reserves, and part of the reason for deficits is that the board has been spending more on special education than it receives from the province.

Green also clarifies that the loss of teachers from dozens of classrooms isn’t “layoffs” of full-time teachers, but rather a move to save money: resource teachers are being moved into classrooms covered by long-term occasional teachers, whose contracts are being cut short.

Calandra has said that disrupting all of those classrooms mid-year for about 1,400 students was not acceptable.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press

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