We don't need new turf wars
by Josh Matlow for the Toronto Star
April 4, 2008
Ten years ago, Queen's Park hastily pushed through a plan to create the amalgamated Toronto District School Board, merging the city's seven smaller public school boards. Now, after massive amounts of energy, staff hours and tax dollars were doled out to integrate the "legacy" boards, the current government is musing about splitting Canada's largest school board apart.
I did not support amalgamation when it was initially introduced. It was done by the Mike Harris government in a manner that was punitive and blindly ideological rather than one that meaningfully engaged stakeholders, such as parents, students, residents and the school boards themselves, into the decision-making process.
To the Liberal government's credit, it has asked the TDSB to offer recommendations on reforming its own governance structure – an unprecedented move as the government has essentially allowed the trustees to frame the public discussion.
However, while the board is grappling with curbing the student dropout rate, a plummeting enrolment, dispensing with its surplus property, combating youth violence, finding a new director and balancing its budget while still burdened by a flawed provincial funding formula, many trustees justly believe that the question of governance should be a discussion for another day.
Some trustees will argue that the board should have an executive committee that would see a handful of trustees with more power than the whole, some would prefer a group of community boards like Toronto's community council system, and some would choose the devolution proposal.
I personally believe the province should study how New York and Chicago reformed their education systems by breaking down silos between their school board and city governments. However, until we arrive at the ultimate destination, I suggest we look for ways to improve upon our current model.
As an amalgamated board, the TDSB has indeed streamlined many of the costly services and bureaucracies once duplicated by Toronto's legacy boards. It offers specialty schools to residents across the city and shares facility space and recreation services, such as school pools, with city hall. It is better able to negotiate with its several employee groups, distribute staff and programs equitably among schools and, with roughly 250,000 students, is better positioned to leverage funding out of the province's education coffers.
In fact, Toronto already has four school boards (public, Catholic, French public and French Catholic) and simply does not need more expensive political fiefdoms replicating bureaucracies, fighting over turf, competing over the existing dearth of resources, with each inheriting many of the challenges the TDSB faces today.
To be honest, no reasonable and informed person could argue that the TDSB is the poster child for an effective and functional governance model. However, let us remember that while our school buildings continue to crumble, our pools are threatened with closure and too many of our students are either not being served well enough or are falling into harm's way, we must not be distracted by the priorities of politicians that too often take precedence over those of our parents, students and residents.
Josh Matlow is the Toronto District School Board trustee for Ward 11.