By Pepper Parr
September 3rd, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Andrea Grebenc had some cogent comments on why school board trustees are needed and what they have done, but, other than pressing the local MPP to urge the government to leave well enough alone there wasn’t much in the way of concrete steps parents could take.
Natalie Pierre speaking in the provincial legislature.
The problem is that Burlington MPP Natalie Pierre is part of the problem. Photo ops and toeing the party line covers the job she does. She doesn’t really have the support of the community – squeaked in by less than 50 votes during the April election.
During the Grebenc interview we expressed some concern about nothing in the way of a statement from the HDSB trustee chair. Grebenc explained that the Board doesn’t meet in the summer and now meets just once a month. Fair enough, the Board will meet sometime, hopefully soon.
We asked if Grebenc planned on delegating on the mater. She explained that the rules are that you can delegate on issues on the agenda. There is provision to waive that rule but the trustees have to approve a request to delegate by a majority vote. One would think that as a former Board chair they would permit a delegation.
The trustees serve on a number of committees – the audit committee, one that Grebenc has never served on. There is a Discipline Committee – they review decisions on suspending a student on behavior issues.
Why have trustees not spoken up? They fear repercussions and they don’t want to have to put up with social media blow back.
Grebenc serving as Chair of the School Board.
Grebenc also explained that the province determines what the budget is going to be. Once the board has a budget they decide what they can do and what might have to be cut. Salaries eat up more than 80% of the budget – not much left to squabble about.
Two areas where the trustees in Burlington have been effective is special education and French immersion.
There was a major battle to get additional funds allocated to Special Education and the baord view prevailed.
One of the really strong programs is the Baccalaureate program. It is a very popular and well attended program in Oakville. Burlington has its version of the program but it isn’t as well attended as the Oakville offering.
We have already reported on our efforts to get a statement from current Chair Amy Collard. Other than saying there had not been a response Collard had nothing to say.
What was particularly disappointing with the Collard response is how effective she was when the Board decided that two of the five high schools had to be closed.
Amy Collard staring at then Director of Education Stuart Miller when the Board was debating the closure of Burlington high schools.
Collard was withering in her questioning of the Director of Education Stuart Miller. She managed to have the decision to close Bateman High school moved back by to years.
For reasons that I’ve been able to discern Amy Collard just gave up and it looks as if the government has given up on the concept of school board representing the interests of the community.
School Board and City Council are as local as you can get. Once you loose it – it will be very hard to get it back.
The Minister of Education doesn’t see it that way.
Education Minister Paul Calandra calling the way school boards operate a “very old model” and promising to announce changes before the end of the year. He has already started looking at other options, including getting rid of elected trustees.
“The work they’re doing right now, they will not be doing in the future — there is absolutely no way,” Calandra told the Toronto Star in an interview. “The model just has to be updated, one way or another.”
Paul Calandra: “..school boards operate a “very old model”.
He added: “any change that I do make with respect to trustees, it will be accompanied by a very robust mechanism” for parents to “have their voices heard if there is an issue that they need to have addressed with their child in the school.”
The revamp “is all about making it better for students, parents and teachers,” he said.
Critics warn that eliminating elected trustees won’t solve any problems — and could create a whole set of new ones. They point to places like PEI or New Brunswick, where trustees were reinstated after public outcry, or Nova Scotia, where they are set to make a return after the education centres that took over their work left families feeling shut out of the system.
This story isn’t over.
School Boards serve no useful purpose. They are expensive, ill-functioning vestiges of an educational system that has moved on and needs to move much further. Part of the progress should be a ‘back to the future’ type of direction in which academic fundamentals gain priority over ‘feel good life-lessons’ and a social agenda that has become seriously distorted. Part of the progress should be consolidation of the educational infrastructure and the removal of religion from the classroom. The Catholic school system has no place in Ontario any longer, if it ever had, and has become an ‘uncreative anachronism’. And in response to Ms. Grebenc’s assertion that local school boards are necessary to preserve local voice – not so. As a recent example, the massive and totally misplaced/inaccurate reaction to Egerton Ryerson’ legacy in Burlington, was started by a single individual at Ryerson Public School then driven by an ignorant minority and a complicit, value-signaling Council. Let’s return to basics – and these should include respect for the truth and historical accuracy.
There have been problems with some of the School Boards. In fact the government has taken over the running of some of them.
In Toronto some of the public school boards have passed rules that have changed the fundamental basis of acceptance of all students.
There have been issues of school boards spending thousands of dollars in travel expenses and the purchasing of very expensive art.
I don’t know what the answer is but the current model does not seem to be working.