Two days after the province took control of the Peel District School Board, the board's chair is pushing back, arguing that the takeover is meant to distract from a shortfall in provincial education funding rather than fix any mismanagement in Peel.
Education Minister Paul Calandra placed the board, which runs public schools in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, under provincial supervision on Wednesday, Jan. 28, citing five straight years of deficits and what he described as a plan to cut 60 teachers partway through the school year. Peel is the seventh board taken over since Calandra became minister last year. The board has two weeks to respond before he decides whether to end the supervision or appoint a supervisor in place of elected trustees.
The chair's response
On Friday, board chair David Green called the supervision a "smokescreen" meant to divert attention from provincial underfunding. He said Peel's past deficits were always covered by drawing on the board's reserves, and that a key reason for the shortfalls is that the board spends more on special education than the province gives it for that purpose.
It has nothing to do with bad management or anything like that.
— David Green, chair, Peel District School Board
Green also disputed the minister's description of the classroom changes. He said the plan was not a layoff of full-time teachers. Instead, to save money, resource teachers were being moved into classrooms currently covered by long-term occasional teachers, whose contracts would end early. Calandra has said that disrupting those classrooms in the middle of the year was not acceptable.
Why it matters to Mississauga families
The Peel board is Ontario's second-largest, and a large share of its schools are in Mississauga. Under supervision, trustees are sidelined and their pay stops, which means parents who usually take concerns to their local trustee would be dealing with a provincial appointee instead.
It would not be Peel's first experience with provincial control. The board was previously under supervision from 2020 to 2023.
Critics of the province's approach, including opposition parties, argue that boards across Ontario are in poor financial shape because funding has not kept pace with rising needs and inflation, the same case Green is making for Peel.
