Given that far too many of Ontario’s school boards’ elected trustees cannot be trusted to manage the public interest regarding board budgets and what goes on in Ontario’s schools, that model should be completely abolished in favour of the New Brunswick model of “School Districts.”

Yesterday, for example, Ontario’s Education Minister Kathleen Wynn, had to take over the Toronto Catholic Board’s financial affairs by appointing school finance expert Norbert Hartmann, because she no longer had confidence in the ability of its trustees to do what needed to be done.

No doubt many other Ontario boards have also been found to be negligent in their public responsibilities. And, just try to imagine how much all these trustees are costing — money that could be going to school resources — such as membership fees in their associations, their stipends, attendance at conferences and retreats and mileage.

Back in 1995, when I was working for an Ontario PC MPP, the Mike Harris government had to take away Board of Education taxing powers because of a similar “trustee” entitlement culture. At that time it was called the “Who Does What” process but, being on the inside, I can say that much of the downloading was done so as to take away the ability of boards to continually raise education property taxes.

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