By Pepper Parr
August 25th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Ontario’s Education Minister Paul Calandra has floated the idea of reforming school boards and even scrapping elected school trustees. Reports suggest a “deeper question is emerging: “does the province even need school boards at all?”
School Board meetings were well attended when the debate over which high schools were to be closed.
The people of Burlington had a very clear answer to that question. In 2018 the Halton District School Board came to the conclusion that two of the seven high schools should be closed. While the public didn’t agree with that position, what they really disagreed with was the decision to close Central High School.
Strong public protest and a school board trustee meeting that went well past midnight resulted in the closing of Bateman High School.
Lester B. Pearon was scheduled to be closed, and while many regretted the loss of the school, they realized that enrollment was not high enough to keep it open.
Minister of Education Calandra says the province’s current school governance model is “outdated” and that he is “open to” eliminating elected trustees altogether.
While the idea alarmed education experts, trustees, and opposition parties, who say the move would erase 175 years of local democratic representation in public education, others, including the Montreal Economic Institute, a right-wing think tank, say this is a long-overdue rethink of a costly and often redundant bureaucracy.
Interesting – not a word at this point from any of the HDSB trustees.
Are they going to just roll over and let it happen?
We will have more for you on this story.
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I can never recall my Local board member asking for input from the parents in the neighborhood.Get rid of them.They have no power and only use the job as a stepping stone to political arena.
I being involved in the PARC I have wondered if we wouldn’t have been better off communicating to the province. The hours of delegations that took place, I still believe the Trustees heard none of us, or chose not to hear us. What is happening to Bateman now was suggested, we were told it couldn’t be done.
Yes I think Trustees could be eliminated and have no effect on the education system.
I agree with Lynn Crosby that the Catholic board should be eliminated.
I have not known School Boards to be the source of anything useful – only petty internal strife, questionable spending and governance scandals. The trustees are, with few exceptions, ineffective and virtually anonymous. I think that they have lost sight of their purpose and mission. Our local Board, for example, has six (or seven) key strategies and not one deals with promoting academic competency let alone excellence. I see no negative impact at all if the Boards in toto ceased to exist.
And as Lynn has indicated, it is also time to consolidate school systems and remove religion (except as a sociology subject) from the curriculum. The place for faith is in churches and individual consciences not schoolrooms.
I have long thought that having one Ontario School Board with local or regional satellite offices would do much to eliminate the redundancy of having two different school boards in municipalities all across Ontario — the regular school board and the Catholic school board — and their two offices, their two Directors, all the superintendents, staff, etc. Unfortunately, local trustees in my opinion have very little actual power anyway, and have been controlled by the province for eons. In the years when my kids were in the public school system and I was actively involved with local education, I did not find the trustees to have very much impact at all.
I also think the Catholic school system should be eliminated, but that is another issue altogether.
Can anyone actually name your trustee?
What do they actually do? Do you vote for the first name on the ballot?
Maybe it is time to rid ourselves of these Trustees.