FUREY: Clean up the TDSB this summer before kids return to class

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As Toronto public school students enjoy a summer full of camps, play and sports, let’s hope the system that they return to in September undergoes significant change.  

Public education in Ontario has become a mess. That is why it is welcome news that the provincial government has appointed supervisors to take over a number of school boards across the province, including the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). 

Our schools should focus on academic excellence and student safety. Instead, under the current bureaucracy and trustee leadership, education is declining – funding is mismanaged, horrible behaviour and violence is normalized and the pushing of political agendas is now commonplace. 

What the appointment of the supervisors effectively means is that board trustees are sidelined and the supervisor can give direction to senior bureaucrats to clean up this mess. 

Education Minister Paul Calandra is bringing in this much-needed oversight due primarily to serious concerns over financial mismanagement. Parents and taxpayers expect education funding to go into the classroom — for the hiring of staff and classroom resources and the maintenance of schools. It shouldn’t be going to international travel for trustees, which happened at one board, or to further ballooning bureaucracy. 

But this is also an opportunity for Premier Doug Ford and Minister Calandra to have the supervisor clean up other serious problems in the TDSB and other boards. 

I hear from teachers who work in classrooms in Toronto and across the GTA about how students aren’t just fighting each other but now swearing at, spitting on and even hitting their teachers. I know some who have walked away from their jobs — and the seniority and benefits that come with it — because the classroom situation has gotten so out of control. 

Teachers and principals are no longer empowered to bring in meaningful discipline in the classroom. Kids do not face consequences for their actions. 

Instead, teachers fear the consequences they will receive for simply laying down the law — both from politically correct bureaucrats and entitled parents who believe their kids can do no wrong. 

Rogue teachers should be fired for turning classrooms into incubators for their own agendas, whether they be geopolitics, identity politics or gender confusion. They distract from the majority of teachers who want to focus on academic excellence in core subjects. 

Parents now routinely refer to GTA schools as little more than free daycare. There are many parents who either withdraw kids from public school or pay for tutoring. This new status quo is unfair to everyone — including to families who can’t afford extra support. The whole point of public education is that it should be equally beneficial to all, but now lower income families are left with the scraps. 

Concerned parents hopefully realize that they need to get more involved in the education system. Trustee politics can have a more direct impact on their family’s lives than other levels of government. Yet for too long it has been the domain of far-left activists who use school boards as a means-to-an-end launchpad to run for other levels of government. 

The Ford government is right to embark on this approach. Although it’s important for parents to know that this isn’t the first time supervisors have been put in charge of boards in Ontario. It’s one of many tools in the toolkit to bring accountability and common sense into the classroom. 

It will be a tall order to tackle these problems — but let’s hope the supervisors make a dent in them between now and September when kids go back to class. 

Anthony Furey is a former long-time Postmedia columnist and ran for Mayor of Toronto in 2023.