…but first, a word from The Incline.

I had absolutely no doubt that you amazing Inclineites would come through. All you wonderful folks, along with close friends and family, contributed $652.24 to my fundraising efforts for the 2025 Pride and Remembrance Run in Toronto this past weekend. That money will all go to important charities helping members of the queer community in our area. Thank you again for your support! As promised, here’s a selection of photos from the race, featuring myself and my friend and curling teammate Josh, who ran with me. I was happy to come in under 30 minutes (there was a little delay because of an accident with another runner ahead of me, so my time was a little off) and I’ll be sure to run again next year with the goal of raising more and shaving a few minutes off my time!

Now that we’re into the depths of summer, I have a lot of projects that need tending to, lest they languish on the side of my desk forever. I’ll be off next week and may post only sporadically through the summer. I’ve been so incredibly appreciative of everyone’s support and kind words (again, thanks for the emails, I’ll work on responding to them when I can) over the past few months.

By September, I hope to be back at it on a regular schedule. AND stay tuned for an announcement about another Incline: LIVE event coming in the fall!

Okay, on with the newsletter!

The Magical Disappearing Democracy

Half-sweet dairy-free caffè-mocha frappa-school board

Imagine, if you will, a company that provides an essential service. Let’s just use a random example, say…caffeinating sleepy communities.

This company has a long, long history. When they first got started, they set up a handful of branches. The managers at the top told the people running these branches that they had expansive powers to run their shops as they pleased. This included the power to set prices and to provide coffee in the way that made the most sense for their community. They could hire their own baristas, decorate as they saw fit, and generally make sure the location was well-maintained. They didn’t have much in the way of resources, but they made due with what they had.

As the company grew and more people sought out coffee, the higher-ups decided to make some changes as to how the organization was structured. In fact, they kept making changes every couple of years, trying to find the right formula that worked for everyone.

After around 150 years, the company had grown from a smattering of branches to a massive collection of around 3,000 different locations. The company realized that they needed to make some serious changes to prevent the whole coffee empire from collapsing in on itself. So a period of intense restructuring began, merging locations to ensure the most efficient delivery of services possible. Most importantly, though, the powers of the people running each branch were redefined. Suddenly, all decoration and style choices came from head office. They had less power over which baristas they hired. And head office changed how they could set their prices, centralizing control with the higher-ups and giving the people who ran each branch less authority to price things in a way that would allow them to cover their costs.

When management at head office changed, they began rolling back the amount of money they directed to each branch while, simultaneously, asking the branches to start doing more. More people each year wanted coffee, but they didn’t want to pay more for it. And the head office managers certainly didn’t want to be blamed for higher prices and/or poorer quality coffee.

Successive changes in management meant less and less money was going to each branch. Finally, branches found themselves in the position where they needed to start selling off their assets to make ends meet. They kept asking head office to ensure they were funded properly, but head office kept telling them to make cuts without reducing service. Some people began to believe that the strategy was an excuse from head office to sell off branches to profit-driven competitors.

Finally, after years of trying to balance the books without help from head office, a few local branches were told that head office had decided to take them over without telling them. Head office came in and dismissed the people who ran each branch. In their place, they appointed a few of their friends to “supervise” each branch - branches that were sliced and diced to meet head office’s unrealistic expectations. The expectation was that, at some point, every branch would likely be taken over and reworked without the input of the people who run them or the customers they serve. While head office’s supervisors took stock of the art on the walls and the value of the land on which each branch sits, people asked: won’t somebody think of the coffee!?

I’ve come up with better metaphors in the past, but I can’t be blamed; I’m undercaffeinated.

Supervise me

On Friday, June 27 - Pride Friday, no less! - Education Minister Paul Calandra (still a weird thing to say) announced, seemingly out-of-the-blue, that the provincial government would be “taking control” of four school boards. These boards - the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) , and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board (DPCSB) - join the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB - sorry for all the acronyms) in having the provincial Ministry of Education place them under “supervision”.

What does that mean?

Excellent question! When the announcement was made, almost no one had any idea.

It took until this week for trustees with the TDSB to find out what “supervision” meant.

Trustees have essentially been placed on unpaid leave, meaning the democratically elected school boards of 6.3 million Ontarians - 44.8% of the province - have been suspended and replaced with five unelected supervisors.

The TVDSB supervisor - Paul Boniferro, the former deputy Attorney General - was appointed back in April. His appointment came after it was revealed that 18 members of the boards admin team went on a teambuilding retreat to Toronto, which included a hotel stay inside the Rogers Centre and a trip to a Blue Jays game, that cost $38,445. The TVDSB’s Director of Education resigned as a result, but the province still thought it necessary to strip the board’s elected representatives of their power and take control of the whole operation themselves.¹ Since being appointed, Boniferro has cancelled almost all official public meetings, meaning that an already less-than-transparent governance regime has become, in essence, entirely opaque.

Of course, none of the supervisors have education experience. In the case of the DPCSB, the supervisor is Rick Byers, a former PC MPP. The TDSB’s supervisor was a Metrolinx advisor. The TCDSB’s is a lawyer. The OCDSB’s helps run a pension plan.

None of the supervisors will interact with the public. The trustees elected to help be the intermediaries between parents, school boards, and the province once did that, but have now been locked out of their offices and email accounts. Trustees have even been told they are no longer permitted to engage with teachers and parent councils. The pay for public trustees has been suspended, but their Catholic colleagues will still earn 25% of their honourarium because a provincial supervisor still needs to ask their opinion relating to “denominational issues”.²

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Bureaucratæ, amen.

Of course, these supervisors have been appointed because, according to the province, “recent investigations showed they [the boards] each had accumulated deficits.” That’s why the trustees of the beleaguered Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board (BHNCDSB), where trustees spent $50,000 on a European art buying extravaganza, have been allowed to keep their jobs. The province only appointed a “reviewer” to the BHNCDSB who made recommendations to improve governance. Calandra “demanded” that trustees repay what they spent and vowed to “fire” the one who failed to do so - though there is no legislation in Ontario which would allow him to do that and he’s made no effort to introduce any, so we’ll see about that.³

***

This current saga began in May when the province hired accounting leviathans PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte to poke around the books of the TDSB, TCDSB, and OCDSB. At the time, TDSB chair and perennial candidate Neethan Shan (presently in the midst of his 13th or 14th run for office - in a by-election to replace the councillor who defeated him in 2018, which, if he won, would leave his trustee position vacant) told reporters he was confident that the auditors would find out that the board was not being funded to the level it needed to be to provide the essential services it was expected to offer. The province, on the other hand, had its own story, claiming that trustees had “misplaced priorities” and were running deficits that they only eliminated by selling school properties.⁴ Few in the province have actually been able to say what those misplaced priorities are, though it doesn’t take a skilled political operative to understand that Calandra and the PCs are keeping it vague so that anyone with a complaint about issues around schooling, from teacher’s unions to “woke” programs to imagined cultures of corruption, will accept the province’s narrative and trust they’re working their hardest to root out the problem.

The auditors obviously came back and said there was too little in the black column and too much in the red column. So the province stepped in and dissolved the democratically-elected boards of trustees all under the auspices of getting school boards “back on track” and stopping the “political sideshows” of trustees. While trustees have been attacking the move as an “anti-democratic coup”, too few people have any idea what trustees even do, meaning the province’s narrative has won out. The Star’s provincial opinion columnist, Martin Regg Cohn, helped launder Calandra’s message by writing: “When all is said and done, sidelining trustees isn’t a diminution of democracy. An elected provincial government with a broader mandate will be more accountable to voters.”⁵  

Never mind that Ontarians didn’t vote for the Tories because they promised to eliminate school boards or that appointed supervisors with no educational experience whatsoever have no business running the school boards that provide an essential service to nearly half of Ontarians. Dismissing elected representatives just because the constitution doesn’t explicitly say that you can’t is, fundamentally, a diminution of democracy.

Not that trustees have had much power for decades.

Obligatory history lesson

The history of school boards in Ontario goes back to the earliest days of colonization.

Ontario’s first Lieutenant Governor, John Simcoe, had been on the frontlines of the American Revolutionary War. After the British defeat, Simcoe was elected to Parliament as a Tory and began developing a strong philosophy around the supremacy of the British way of life compared to that of the ragtag bunch of rebels that had managed to establish their own republic in America. The Prime Minister of the UK at the time, William Pitt the Younger, recognized Simcoe’s zeal and offered him the office of Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada.

At the time, the Lieutenant Governor had considerably more power and influence than they do today. Simcoe managed the province as a quasi-Premier, seeking to establish a thriving and thoroughly British society in Ontario to counterbalance influence coming from the new United States. He got to work straight away by renaming places in the province after British generals, founding modern Toronto (after his first choice for a provincial capital - London - was rejected by the Governor General for being too close to America), informally abolishing slavery (setting the stage for the 1834 complete abolition of slavery in the British Empire), and forging alliances with Indigenous peoples being forced from their lands in the US.

But, of utmost importance to Simcoe was the education of Upper Canada’s youth. Simcoe wanted a network of grammar schools and universities across Ontario to “inculcate just principles, habits, and manners into the rising generation.” Simcoe’s goal was obvious: teach colonists to be good British subjects to counter American influence.

Simcoe’s first proposal for public schools in Ontario came about in 1797. It wasn’t until a year after his death - 1807 - that the first Public Schools Act was passed by the provincial legislature. This Act created eight schools across Ontario and allowed the Lieutenant Governor to appoint at least five trustees to govern each of these schools as they saw fit. The trustees could hire teachers, set curricula, and entirely manage the operation of the schools. Indeed, one of the explicit responsibilities of trustees was to “examine into the moral character, learning, and capacity” of those nominated to be teachers and fire those whose moral character slipped. The only thing they couldn’t do was decide where the schools would be located.

***

The Public Schools Act of 1807 was deeply unpopular. While Simcoe’s goal was the creation of schools to create good British subjects, in reality, the province’s schools catered almost exclusively to the wealthy. So, in 1816, a new piece of legislation - the Common (sometimes called Elementary) Schools Act - was passed, allocating £24,000 amongst all schools in Ontario. The province was divided into eight regions, each with their own Board of Education. If the inhabitants of a community could come together, build a school on their own, and show that at least 20 children would attend it regularly, they would get a part of that £24,000 (but no more than £100 a year) and could elect three trustees to oversee the school. Again, these trustees could hire and fire teachers, determine the rules and regulations for a school, decide which books to buy and which lessons could be taught.

There were two very important elements of this piece of legislation. The first was that the money allocated to schools came from either the province or charging of fees. There was no provision for funding schools through property tax. The second is that all inhabitants of a district could vote for trustee. There were no property qualifications at all, meaning trustee elections in Ontario were some of the first in Canada held under universal male suffrage (there are some indications that property holding women, such as widows, were even allowed to vote, but the records on that are muddled).

In 1824, the province created a general Board of Education - an early version of today’s Ministry of Education - in the first attempt at centralizing matters. This new province-wide Board of Education, led by Bishop John Strachan (in many ways the spiritual head of the aristocratic Family Compact), was to fill in the gaps as the province grew beyond the original eight districts and ensure that new communities had schools for eager young minds. After Upper and Lower Canada were united in 1841, new legislation increased funding for schools from the province, property taxes, and a monthly tuition fee of $0.25 per student in a school. That legislation also allowed for the appointment of a Chief Superintendent of Education.

In 1844, the Governor General appointed his first Chief Superintendent, selecting a reforming Methodist missionary and crusading educator for the task. That appointee - Egerton Ryerson - was given the responsibility of updating legislation with regard to education in Ontario. Ryerson’s work resulted in the creation of the Education Act (sometimes called the Common School Act) of 1846, which tried to standardize schools across the province with uniform textbooks, policies, and standards of education. To accomplish this, Ryerson proposed the creation of District Superintendents who would make sure people across the province received the same level and standard of education. In this, Ryerson helped create some of the first educational bureaucrats appointed in Ontario. At the same time, Ryerson’s reforms began rolling back some powers previously held by trustees, including the power over setting rules and mandating discipline. The strap had been taken from the hands of trustees and placed in those of the Chief Superintendent himself.

***

In 1850, updates to the Education Act ensured that, for each municipality with a ward system, two trustees would be elected per ward on a staggered basis. As municipal elections were held annually, that meant that residents would vote for one trustee per year for a term of two years. In smaller municipalities, trustees were still elected on a school-by-school basis.

Reforms in 1871 abolished tuition fees, finally placing the responsibility for the provision of schooling on local and provincial taxpayers. These reforms also mandated that children attend school for, at minimum, four months of the year and that trustees had to appoint “boards of examiners” to determine teacher qualifications, once again stripping power from trustees. Five years later, the office of Chief Superintendent was abolished and was replaced with a head bureaucrat appointed by the new Ministry of Education.

From that point until the early 1990’s, Ontario’s school boards stayed relatively stable. There were frequent mergers, changes, and political shifts, but education funding was generally managed by local property taxpayers and supplemented by provincial transfers. Throughout the 20th century, more and more power shifted away from elected trustees and to local civil servants and provincial administrators.

In 1997, the Harris government introduced the “Fewer School Boards Act, 1997”, which created the “district” school boards we know today. This slimmed the number of boards to 66 (it’s 72 today), capped the number of trustees that could be elected to boards, and began shifting responsibility for school funding away from property taxpayers and more toward the province.⁶

***

Today, trustees have narrowly defined responsibilities. They have the power to set a board’s “policy direction”, ensuring the board prioritizes student success by setting goals for achievement, help parents, caregivers, and students navigate the system, and hold the appointed Director of Education accountable.

Beyond that, there’s actually little trustees can really do. And, in the absence of substantive responsibilities, things can get derailed quite quickly.

Take the case of former OCDSB trustee Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth. Kaplan-Myrth was elected in 2022 after being asked to run by community members thanks to her advocacy around public health during the pandemic. For the three years she was on the board, Kaplan-Myrth endured constant attacks for her work from extremists in the community and from her fellow trustees. Her push to have masking reinstated in schools in 2022 brought out Convoyists and assorted anti-vaxxers. In trying to take them to task, she was slapped with an accusation of violating the board’s Code of Conduct for texting another trustee that the Convoyists were “white supremacists”. After it was found that she did not violate the Code of Conduct - quite literally moments after - a far-right activist who had threatened to harm her ambushed her at a meeting. After telling him to “back off”, she was hit with another Code of Conduct accusation. This one panned out after it was lumped in with another complaint about Kaplan-Myrth accusing her fellow trustees of not doing enough to address anti-Semitism. After the final accusation and the board denying Kaplan-Myrth a leave of absence, she simply resigned, rather than participate in the process any longer.⁷

Over three years, Kaplan-Myrth was subjected to three Code of Conduct reviews submitted by other trustees. An outspoken member of the community, Kaplan-Myrth had used her position to advocate for queer students, members of the Jewish community, and a renewed focus on public health. Having a platform as trustee allowed Kaplan-Myrth to do that. But, as the Ontario School Trustees Association notes, trustees are part of a “team” and the team is expected to act as one. Stepping outside those bounds and raising too much of a stink on causes you care about results, in some cases, in formal sanctions and ostracization.

The future of trustees in Ontario

It is entirely possible that the Minister of Education’s actions regarding the five school boards taken under supervision is just the opening salvo in what will be a lengthy war on trustees. The Rainbow District School Board (RDSB - the board for the Sudbury area) has already announced they’re using cash reserves to cover their budget deficit for next year, meaning they could be next in line for supervision.

Ultimately, the provincial government has failed to provide the funding necessary to ensure Ontario’s schools have the resources they need to keep operating. The Ford government’s policy is that government should be as small, ineffective, and unobtrusive as possible. Anything the state can do, according to our premier, the private sector can do better.

Meddlesome trustees with their opinions and public platform and limited, but still present, powers are just another roadblock in Ford’s way. His goal, as it has always been, is to make government work as inefficiently as possible to justify destroying, reworking, or selling off pieces to the highest bidder. Just as his government has always done, he’s starting by introducing programs in big, predominantly opposition-led areas, waiting for the public response before taking the next step.

Today, it’s the TDSB. Tomorrow, it could be the RDSB. And, eventually, it could mean the abolition of the position of trustee entirely. Abolishing the office of elected trustee would mean ending a democratically elected office that has existed in this province for over 200 years.

If Ford’s goal is to smash and reshape this province in his own image, that would be an incredible coup de grâce.

1  _{Andrew Lupton and Alessio Donnini. “Controversial Blue Jays stadium trip for TVDSB leaders cost nearly $40K” CBC News London, September 12, 2024 (Link).}

2  _{Isabel Teotonio and Asma Sahebzada. “School trustees with TDSB told what they can and can’t do (it’s mostly can’t) after Ford government takes over the board” Toronto Star/Hamilton Spectator, July 2, 2025 (Spec link).}

3  _{Celeste Percy-Beauregard. “Education minister vows to fire Brant Catholic trustee” Brantford Expositor, May 30, 2025 (Link).}

4  _{Kris Rushowy and Isabel Teotonio. “Ford government sends financial investigators into Toronto school boards” Toronto Star/Hamilton Spectator, May 8, 2025 (Spec link).}

5  _{Martin Regg Cohn. “Sidelining school trustees makes Ford’s government more accountable — for better or worse” Toronto Star/Hamilton Spectator, July 3, 2025 (Spec link).}

6  _{Sources for this section are: J. Harold Putman. Egerton Ryerson and Education in Upper Canada, Toronto: William Briggs, 1912 (Project Gutenberg Link); George W. Ross. The School System of Ontario (Canada): Its History and Distinctive Features. New York: D. Appleton, 1896 (Canadiana Link).}

7  _{Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth. “Kaplan-Myrth: Why I resigned as a trustee from the OCDSB” Ottawa Citizen, June 4, 2025 (Link).}