Since Ontario’s Bill 33, Supporting Children and Students Act, came into effect back in mid-November, several of Ontario’s public-school boards have had their trustees fired and replaced with provincial supervisors at the discretion of the Minister of Education.
School board trustees in Ontario are publicly elected members who serve four-year terms on their local school boards. Trustees get paid an average of $5,900 per year with an honorarium limit of around $7,500 to $29,500 per year depending on the school board.
School board trustees serve their communities as local representatives and are tasked with bringing about “student achievement, well-being and equity,” while connecting locals to the education process. The board of trustees is responsible for the performance of both staff and students as well as for fiscal policy. The board has the responsibility to communicate this to the community that elected them.
The board of trustees has been described as an essential element of Ontario’s “democratic heritage”, and critics warn that their removal is an “attack on democracy.”
On the other hand, supervisors who are newly appointed to replace school board trustees have the ability to directly charge school boards $350,000 per year maximum or $1,000 per half day of work, for a total of 3.5 days of work each week.
Bill 33 allows school boards to be placed under investigation and later under supervision at the discretion of the Minster of Education, Paul Calandra.
The Ford government has suggested that the reasons for the investigation include financial mismanagement and “issues where schools and trustees think that they’re in charge of geopolitical events.”
School board trustees from the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board in Brandford, Ontario spent nearly $50,000 on a trip to Italy to acquire $100,000 in art for two schools back in 2024, raising concerns of financial mismanagement. All involved trustees agreed to repay the money spent on their trip.
During the same year, the Thames Valley District School Board revealed that it spent nearly $40,000 on a Toronto Blue Jays trip.
More recently, however, school board takeovers have been focused more on claims of mismanaged funds and deficit running, which led the provincial government to take over the Toronto District, Toronto Catholic, Ottawa Carleton and Dufferin-Peel Catholic school boards in June 2025.
Opponents in these cases argue that provincial funding for education has not kept up with inflation and enrollment fluctuations, leading to sentiments that these takeovers are now more about control.
NDP MPP Chandra Pasma, the official opposition critic for education, has stated that “the Minister’s appointees are Conservative insiders with no qualifications in education, who are acting without transparency and are showing absolutely zero accountability to anyone except the minister.”
When adjusted for inflation, the provincial government has underfunded public schools by about $6.3 billion as compared to 2018 levels. The Toronto District School Board receives around $400 less per student in 2025-26 when compared to 2018-19 levels, had funding matched inflation and enrollment.
With Ford’s government continuing to discuss the abolition of school trustees and drastic changes having been made to post-secondary OSAP funding, the government’s relationship to public education is one to reflect on.