As Ontario’s Education Minister Paul Calandra floats the idea of reforming school boards and even scrapping elected school trustees, a deeper question is emerging: does the province even need school boards at all?
Calandra says the province’s current school governance model is “outdated” and he is “open to” eliminating elected trustees altogether.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 (MEI), a right-wing think tank, say this is a long-overdue rethink of a costly and often redundant bureaucracy.