School board trustees will remain on the ballot this fall, but will see a significant reduction in their roles, a move that has left questions and concerns from local school officials and unions.

On Monday, Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra announced proposed changes coming to the province’s English school system. If the legislation passes, it would cap the number of elected trustees to 12 and create oversight roles centred on financial oversight and student achievement.

Maedith Radlein, chair of the board of trustees for the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB), told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo’s The Morning Edition she was not expecting the changes Calandra proposed.

“We had assumed that the announcement would be directed at eliminating trustees and instead what we got was an announcement that actually changes the structure of the board,” she said.

Calandra had been hinting at changes to the education system for quite some time, following high-profile cases of misspending, including one board’s approval of a $40,000 administrator retreat to Toronto and another’s $100,000-plus art-buying trip to Italy that led to the province putting eight boards under provincial supervision in recent months.

Calandra said the cap on trustees focuses mainly on Toronto school boards and will not impact others that have less than 12 trustees. Waterloo Region District School Board has 11 trustees while the Waterloo Catholic District School Boards has nine.

Part of the new oversight roles will see the director of education become the chief executive officer and be responsible for financial and operational matters of the board.

The chief executive officer will be required to have a business background and part of their role will be to appoint a chief education officer, who will focus on student achievement. 

Radlein said she’s not sure how that will improve academic outcome and believes students “were lost” in Monday’s announcement.

“This whole announcement, I didn’t hear students mentioned at all,” she said.

She noted the chief executive officer “is not required to know anything about education and conditions for learning at all and I find that really surprising.”

She said the board will be communicating with parents what these changes mean as they receive more information and said they should be prepared for change this fall.

“All boards have to set up parent offices in September so parents have concerns addressed,” she said.

“They will no longer have direct access, as they now do, with trustees and staff who could respond immediately to needs or meetings and conversations as needed.”

Reduced trustee roles concerning

School board trustees will remain as part of the board, but will see a significant reduction to what they can do. Under the proposed legislation, trustees’ salaries will be capped and their discretionary expenses will be limited to only the essentials.

The creation and delivery of the board’s budget will also now fall under the responsibility of the chief executive officer. Calandra said trustees will have the ability to share their input on the budget, but they will not be allowed to make changes.

It also means trustees will no longer be at the centre of bargaining and negotiations. That responsibility will be placed on the chief executive officer as well.

Kathleen Woodcock is president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association and is also a trustee with WRDSB. She told CBC News she is “deeply concerned” with the proposed changes as it will limit parent representation at the board.

She said she still has many questions and views Monday’s announcement as the ministry taking a step back from strengthening public education in the province.

“These changes that the government is proposing is only pointing to increase centralization and a huge growing gap and distance between Queen’s Park and the communities that they serve,” Woodcock said shortly after the announcement.

“Removing those responsibilities from trustees means removing decisions from people who are directly accountable to the community and moving it to positions that are directly accountable to the Minister of Education.”

Woodcock said she is also concerned with the lack of consultation the ministry had with trustees and education stakeholders prior to the announcement, saying they “are in the dark.”

System changes ignores classroom issues: Unions

WRDSB said in a statement to CBC News their focus “remains on day-to-day school operations and on supporting student learning and well-being in safe, caring, and inclusive environments.”

A spokesperson for the Waterloo Catholic District School Boards said the board “welcome the province’s continued focus on student achievement and fiscal accountability — values that are central to how we operate every day” and will take time to understand the proposed legislation before commenting further.

René Jansen in de Wal, president Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, told CBC News the issues of violence in classrooms, growing class sizes and the underfunding of schools continues to get missed by the ministry.

“It seems too purposeful to be actually distracting from the big issues by going after these other things,” he said.

He also shared concerns over the proposed restructuring of school boards, saying it’s heading in the direction of how boards are run in the United States.

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) also said Monday’s announcement doesn’t fix the “real issues” educators are facing.

David VandenBerg, president of the Waterloo Teachers and Occasional Teachers’ Bargaining Unit with OSSTF said in a statement he is “disappointed” and the changes “will do little to fix the lack of support that teachers and education workers desperately need.”