Toronto school trustees have voted themselves new guidelines that dictate who they can speak to, as well as when to end conversations if confidential matters arise.

In what one trustee is calling a violation of Charter rights, the Toronto District School Board decided Wednesday night to ban contact between a trustee and an employee of the board who is up for a promotion, without first clearing it with a school's superintendent.

Trustees must now also immediately end any conversation with a person who discloses information that could only have been obtained by a breach of confidentiality.

Violators could be hauled before the board's ethics committee, which recently banned Trustee Scott Harrison from a number of private meetings for discussing a personnel matter. The committee cannot fire a trustee.

"I understand what they are trying to get to, what I'm concerned about is ... that it's going way over their purview, into people's lives," said Trustee Josh Matlow, an outspoken critic on some board issues.

Matlow has written a letter to Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, asking her to "place the board's ethics review process under moratorium until the ministry has concluded its work" defining the roles and responsibilities of elected trustees across the province.

Board chair John Campbell called the guidelines mostly procedural, and said trustees can talk to people who are up for a promotion or who have applied for a position – but not about the new job.

There's no intention to police conversations, he said. "The intention is to protect the integrity of the process and protect people's privacy."

The board's ethics committee was struck about a year ago.

Campbell said when dealing with sensitive issues, it is "better to err on the side of caution."

Matlow says the ethics committee recently "found a member guilty of `complicity' in wrongdoing even though it explicitly found that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing."

To see this story, visit: 

Public school trustees vote for muzzling ...