Trustees cut spending
Queen’s Park deadline looms,
Toronto District School Board trustees reluctantly agreed to clip their wings Wednesday night — on orders from Queen’s Park — by giving up their offices, firing their constituency assistants, cutting their expense accounts by more than half and limiting their power to have a say in hiring of senior staff.
The moves were taken just nine days before a deadline from Minister of Education Liz Sandals to curb the ability of trustees to get involved in the everyday running of Canada’s largest school board.
Trustees are scrambling to meet 13 sweeping directives from Sandals, by Feb. 13 — a period of just 29 days.
Trustees also made public a list of 60 schools that staff have suggested be reviewed for possible closure over the next six years — nine clusters in the first three years — just days before a Queen’s Park deadline to do so.
The schools, clustered in 17 neighbourhoods and reported recently in the Star, are part of a 10-year capital plan approved by trustees in private last May to deal with both underused and overcrowded schools, year by year. The plan for the first three years — which would review nine clusters of a total of 31 schools for possible closure, merger or boundary changes — has been demanded by Sandals as one of her 13 marching orders. However until Wednesday night trustees had not made this list public.
Sandals issued the directives after a review of the embattled TDSB by educator Margaret Wilson scolded some trustees for being too involved in day-to-day operations but too slow at dealing with some 130 schools that are less than two-thirds full. Sandals has long urged the board to unload unused space to free up funds to tackle a $3 billion backlog in repairs. Half of the board’s nearly 600 buildings were built in the 1950s and 1960s.
Trustees also decided to consider bringing in “a conflict resolution mechanism for dealing with any potential conflict between the director and the board of trustees,” as part of the director’s contract.
It was infighting between some trustees and director of education Donna Quan that prompted Sandals, in part, to send in Wilson to review the board. Trustees will discuss such a mechanism at their meeting next week, but Quan herself said she approves of such a measure.
Wilson’s report also spoke of a “culture of fear” among staff and between some staff and some trustees. In an ironic twist, Quan said the pressure staff and trustees have felt in the last three weeks to meet the sweeping deadline from Queen’s Park has produced collaboration that is helping to “build a culture of trust ... I love the tone I’m feeling and seeing in this room,” said Quan.
However some trustees balked at Sandals’ demand that they give up their say in the hiring of any staff except the director of education — many have been involved in promotion and hiring of superintendents and principals — which Trustee Chris Tonks warned puts too much power “in the hands of the bureaucracy.
“At the end of the day there has to be a balance (between staff and elected trustees)’” said Tonks, who said to simply agree to Sandals’ move to curb trustees’ power is “knee jerk.”
Trustees also voted to cut their office expense budget, give up their private offices at board headquarters and fire the constituency assistants that many hire to do front-line outreach. They agreed to vacate their individual offices on the same floor as senior staff — which some staff complained was too close for comfort and allowed meddling in day-today operations — and move instead to a shared space on the main floor. The cost of renovations will be carried by the TDSB.
Tonks questioned Sandals’ demand that trustees vacate their individual offices on the same floor as senior staff, and move to a shared space on the main floor. “What’s the logic? This is an issue of professionalism ... people should have the dignity of a workspace,” he said.