The Bill Has a Name. The Record Has the Truth
A TOG Response
— The Old Guardian April 13, 2026
The Ontario government has tabled the Putting Student Achievement First Act.
Read that name carefully. Then read what the bill actually does.
What the Bill Claims
Minister Paul Calandra stood at a podium today and told Ontario that this legislation is about student achievement. Accountability. Consistency. Putting every dollar into classrooms.
Those are the words on the label.
Here is what is inside the bottle.
What the Bill Actually Does
Trustees at the Toronto District School Board will be cut from 22 to 12. Their powers are dramatically reduced. They can say yes or no to a budget but cannot change it. If they say no, the Minister decides. They need ministerial approval to fire the CEO. Their honorariums are capped at $10,000. Their expenses are restricted. Their communications are subject to ministerial governance.
The Director of Education — the professional educator leading the system — is replaced by a Chief Executive Officer required to have a business background. Not an education background. A business background.
A Chief Education Officer is created alongside the CEO, appointed by the CEO, focused on student achievement. The CEO can serve as both if qualified. In practice this means a business executive with ministerial blessing controls the operational and educational leadership of the board simultaneously.
If trustees cannot agree on a budget the Minister decides. The eight boards currently under supervision have no timeline for restoration. The legislation does not say when or if their trustees will regain their powers.
The Council of Ontario Directors of Education — made up of CEOs appointed with ministerial approval — replaces trustee associations as the central bargaining agency in provincial labour negotiations. The Ministry now effectively sits on both sides of the collective bargaining table. Directors report to the Minister. The Minister approves CEO appointments. The CEOs negotiate with unions on behalf of boards. The independent voice of elected trustees in labour relations is eliminated.
The Minister can oversee, redirect, or cancel capital projects. He can appoint a third party to take control of a capital project without placing the entire board under supervision. That third party answers to the Minister alone.
Attendance is worth 15% of a final grade in grades 9 and 10, and 10% in grades 11 and 12. Mandatory written exams on official exam days. Ministry-approved learning resources mandated province wide. School board communications subject to ministerial policy and guidelines.
The school climate survey — the mechanism by which students and families with diverse identities and needs communicate their experiences to the system — is effectively neutralized under the communications governance framework.
The Contradiction Aarts Named
Trustee Michelle Aarts, Ward 16, identified the central contradiction of today’s announcement immediately:
“The Minister just doubled the executive roles at most boards when he has repeatedly stated that boards are ‘too top heavy.’”
Calandra spent months arguing that school boards were bloated, top-heavy, and inefficient. Today he added a CEO and a Chief Education Officer to every board in Ontario while cutting the number of elected trustees in half at the TDSB.
He did not reduce the top. He replaced the elected top with an appointed one and called it efficiency.
The cost of that replacement is documented. The elected trustees Calandra sidelined earned approximately $25,000 per year in honorariums. The supervisors he installed to replace them are billing through private companies and adding HST — at rates potentially reaching $400,000 each. The province replaced $25,000 accountable elected representatives with $400,000 unaccountable appointed executives and presented it as fiscal responsibility.
The Bargaining Capture
Aarts identified the collective bargaining change as one of the most consequential elements of the bill — and one that has received almost no coverage.
Trustees have held a statutory role in local bargaining since 1975 under Bill 100. They became central bargaining table partners in 2014 when the School Boards’ Collective Bargaining Act created Ontario’s two-tier bargaining model. That is fifty years of democratic labour relations being eliminated in a single piece of legislation.
Under the new system the Council of Ontario Directors of Education — made up of CEOs who require ministerial approval for their termination — becomes the central bargaining agency. Directors have a reporting duty to the Ministry. The Ministry is now effectively on both sides of the table.
Aarts was precise:
“Having the Council of Directors of Education represent school boards will remove independent voice from the bargaining. Directors have a reporting duty to the Ministry and so can be controlled by the Ministry.”
OSSTF President Martha Hradowy called it a troubling corporatization of public education at the precise moment those executives would be leading central bargaining.
ETFO President David Mastin was direct:
“Trustees are not elected to serve as a buffer for your reckless decision-making.”
Source: ETFO statement, April 13, 2026 — https://www.etfo.ca/news-publications/media-releases/etfo-rejects-education-overhaul-as-an-unprecedented-rollback-of-local-democracy
The Ableist Standard
The attendance requirement — 15% of a grade tied to physical presence — will not improve student outcomes. It will punish the students who are already most vulnerable.
Aarts, who is the parent of a neurodivergent child with an IEP who struggles with school attendance due to anxiety, spoke from direct experience about what punitive attendance policies actually look like at the ground level:
“Attendance has no reflection on knowledge of curriculum. This attendance requirement will punish students with disabilities and mental health issues, or who live in deep poverty. A punitive approach will not improve attendance but it will reduce outcomes for students.”
The bill makes exceptions for excused absences, illness, and religious observance. It does not account for the complex, non-linear relationship between disability, mental health, and school attendance that educators and families navigate daily.
As Aarts noted: standardized exams have not been considered best practice in education since the last century. Even in post-secondary settings their persistence reflects cost efficiency rather than pedagogical effectiveness. Forced exam structures ignore the wide variety of student learning needs.
The bill imposes last-century assessment tools on a 21st-century student population — and ties grades to a physical presence requirement that will most severely penalize the students the system is already failing.
The Property Powers — What Aarts Flagged
Aarts noted she had not had time to do a deep dive on the capital project and property provisions. TOG has.
The legislative architecture is now complete across three bills spanning three years.
Bill 98 in 2023 gave the Minister reporting rights over school board property and the power to direct property decisions — including acquisition, sale, lease, and other disposition.
Bill 33 in 2025 gave the Minister power to supervise boards and remove trustees entirely.
The Putting Student Achievement First Act 2026 now gives the Minister power to oversee, redirect, or cancel capital projects and appoint third parties to control them without placing the entire board under supervision.
Three bills. Three years. A complete legislative transfer of control over $20 billion in public school land from democratic community governance to a single Minister.
Those third parties answer to the Minister. Not to the community. Not to the trustees. Not to the parents.
Consider what this means for the projects that were active the week before supervision was imposed in June 2025:
The 705 Progress Avenue development in central Scarborough — a 29-year community commitment integrating a new school, affordable housing, a community hub, and a city park. Construction targeted for 2027. Now a capital project subject to ministerial oversight, redirection, or cancellation.
The 50 Ethennonnhawahstihnen’ Lane podium school in North York — the first-of-its-kind design integrating a school with affordable housing near a subway station. A business case was being prepared for the Ministry. Now subject to ministerial direction.
The St. Margaret’s proposal — a new school and long-term care facility at near-zero cost to the province. The Ministry already rejected it once. Under this legislation, if it were resubmitted, the Minister could redirect or cancel it and appoint a third party to manage the site instead.
The city-wide MOU committing 20% affordable housing across eight TDSB properties was never voted on. Under this legislation it never needs to be. The Minister can direct property decisions regardless of what trustees or communities want.
Aarts put the risk precisely:
“The legislation gives significant powers to the Minister to order the sale of property or cancel capital projects if he is in some way not happy with the school board. This poses significant risk to school boards, especially from a government that has refused to lift the school closure moratorium and allow boards to manage their own properties and programs.”
A Minister who described school properties as assets whose value must be maintained to the highest level now has legislative authority to redirect or cancel the community-benefit projects that were using those assets to build affordable housing, new schools, and long-term care facilities.
The TLC mandate still reads: preserve public assets, collaborate to build complete communities where people live, learn, work and play.
The bill gives the Minister the power to override that mandate without democratic recourse.
What Was Actually Needed
Aarts identified the actual solutions in a single paragraph:
“Improving Special Education funding and covering the cost of CPP and EI would balance all board budgets.”
The TDSB’s own budget analysis — Appendix A, provided to TOG in September 2025 — documents $389.4 million in structural shortfalls. Of that, $112.6 million represents costs entirely outside board control. Unfunded statutory benefits. Teacher salaries over Ministry benchmarks. ECE wages funded at rates that don’t match reality.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers investigation commissioned by the Ministry confirmed there was no mismanagement driving those deficits. Page 61 of the PwC report states directly: “Throughout the work conducted we did not find any examples of reckless or deliberate wrongdoing, lack of financial oversight or governance or actions resulting in potential reputational damage.”
None of the structural funding problems PwC documented are addressed in this bill.
Special Education underfunded by $38.5 million. Not in this bill.
Mental health supports underfunded by $13.9 million. Not in this bill.
School safety underfunded by $30.5 million. Not in this bill.
53 TDSB schools have lead in their drinking water. Not in this bill.
A $4.5 billion maintenance backlog. Not in this bill.
Zero TDSB capital projects funded in the province’s last capital investment round despite 84.1% of buildings below good repair. Not in this bill.
The Staffing Record Under Supervision
Calandra promised supervision would put resources back into classrooms. The staffing record measures that promise against documented outcomes.
Under supervision at the TDSB for 2026-27:
40 vice-principal positions eliminated. Some schools sharing administrators. Parents at Huron Street Junior Public School have had no vice-principal this year.
289 teacher positions eliminated by the board’s own count — 607 by union figures based on the staffing allocation plan obtained by TorontoToday. The discrepancy itself is the story: decisions being made behind closed doors with no trustee oversight, no public debate, and no accountability. The transparency blackout makes the true number impossible to verify independently.
186 school-based support worker positions eliminated — early childhood educators, lunchroom supervisors, office staff, and school-based safety monitors.
By the board’s own figures the total is 515 positions eliminated in a single year. By union figures it is closer to 633.
CUPE 4400 president John Weatherup was direct: “The math doesn’t work. It seems that we’re deciding we don’t care about children anymore. It’s all about the dollar sign.”
Trustee Alexis Dawson named what this means for Calandra’s central promise: “If the government is touting that they are bringing all resources back into the classroom, that’s clearly a lie because they are directly cutting classroom teachers.”
The Toronto Education Advocacy Network published a formal fact-check of Calandra’s year-end letter to TDSB families documenting that every achievement he claimed credit for under supervision was either approved by trustees before supervision was imposed, not being met under supervision, or actively made things worse.
Source: Toronto Education Advocacy Network — https://linktr.ee/forpublicschools
The Supervision That Dares Not Speak Its Name
Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser said it directly:
“This is supervision by another name. There’s going to be a CEO — effectively a supervisor — in every board across Ontario.”
He is right. The bill does not end supervision at the eight captured boards. It installs a permanent supervision architecture in every board in the province — an appointed business executive with ministerial protection, budget control, and bargaining authority, sitting alongside reduced and defunded elected trustees who can say yes or no but not change anything.
The eight supervised boards remain under ministerial control. The legislation does not say when or if those trustees will regain their powers.
ETFO President David Mastin named what the advocacy achieved and what it failed to stop:
“While the Ford government ultimately rejected Minister Calandra’s initial plan to eliminate all democratically elected trustees — a reversal achieved through months of sustained advocacy — this legislation removes the essential powers trustees need to genuinely represent families and students.”
The trustees survived. Their authority did not.
A Note on the Record
On the day the Putting Student Achievement First Act was tabled, CityNews abruptly fired reporter Tina Yazdani — the journalist who broke multiple stories central to this investigation, including the Ministry’s livestream ban on school board committee meetings and the TDSB’s appeal against city protection of school lands from redevelopment.
TOG notes the timing. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
The Name of the Bill
The Putting Student Achievement First Act.
Under this government’s supervision of the TDSB:
Emergency teacher replacements spiked 1,100%. 515 positions eliminated by the board’s own count. 40 vice-principals gone. Class sizes enlarged. Summer school cut. Language programs cut. Special education classes merged. Advisory committees cancelled. Lead in the water at 53 schools. A $4.5 billion maintenance backlog untouched. $6.3 billion removed from education since 2018. Supervisors earning up to $400,000 replacing trustees who earned $25,000.
If students were actually first, none of that would be true.
The bill has a name. The record has the truth.
TOG will be watching every clause, every regulation, and every ministerial direction that follows from this legislation. The series that began in September 2025 with a question about governance failure ends today with that question answered by the government itself — in legislation that transfers democratic authority over public education to a single Minister while calling it student achievement.
Trustee Michelle Aarts, who has been on the record with TOG since the beginning, offered the clearest summary of what today represents:
“The Minister’s announcement was focused on ‘what Calandra wants’ instead of ‘what students need.’ Incredibly disappointing.”
Incredibly disappointing.
From a trustee who helped build something worth building. Who watched it get dismantled piece by piece. Who spoke when she was told to stay silent. Who is still speaking today.
The record stands.
Sources: CP24, April 13, 2026 Global News, April 13, 2026 ETFO statement, April 13, 2026 —
https://www.etfo.ca
OSSTF statement, April 13, 2026 Ontario Liberal Party statement, April 13, 2026 NDP Education Critic Chandra Pasma statement, April 13, 2026 Trustee Michelle Aarts, Ward 16, Beaches-East York, in direct communication with TOG, April 13, 2026 PwC Financial Investigation Report, June 2025, page 61 — https://www.ontario.ca/files/2025-06/edu-tdsb-investigation-report-en-2025-06-27.pdf TDSB Budget Appendix A — provided to TOG by Trustee Michelle Aarts, September 2025 TLC 2025-26 Annual Plan — torontolandscorp.com TLC Project Updates, June 2025 — torontolandscorp.com TorontoToday, April 7-10, 2026 CBC News, April 1-8, 2026 CityNews Toronto, August 12, 2025 CELA ‘F for Effort’ Report, March 2026 —
https://cela.ca
Toronto Education Advocacy Network Fact-Check — https://linktr.ee/forpublicschools Bill 98, Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 2023 Bill 33, Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025 Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026 NowToronto, April 13, 2026 — Tina Yazdani firing