Ontario’s education minister says the province’s largest school board must make significant cuts to balance its books but has started highlighting areas he won’t allow trustees to touch.
Toronto District School Board is one of several boards in Ontario the Ford government is currently subjecting to intense financial scrutiny, with the threat of a takeover if they can’t make changes.
Trustees at the board were presented with options to consider cutting after the investigation was announced, including closing swimming pools, cutting music programs and delaying access to school computers.
Education Minister Paul Calandra said on Wednesday he was frustrated with those options and continued to threaten further action.
Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
“Their solutions are unsurprising to me — the first thing that they said that they would do would be to fire teachers and close schools,” he said to reporters. “So that’s always going to be the TDSB’s position and, as I said in the house, to be very clear to them that is not where they should start.”
Calandra insisted there were other ways to balance the books at TDSB without cutting staff or programs.
“They should look at other avenues to balance the budget,” he continued. “They’ve had a lot of time to do it and quite frankly, I’m never going to allow them to fire teachers and I will not allow them to close schools that mean so much to the community.”
Global News contacted TDSB for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. Calandra said he had accepted a meeting invitation with the chair of the TDSB.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles, however, accused Calandra of forcing school boards to deeply already, and leaving them with no good choices.
“He keeps demanding more cuts from our school boards, there’s nothing left to cut,” she said. “What is happening now is impacting our kids in their classrooms, and parents across the province are seeing that firsthand.”
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
