The Old Guardian | TDSB Investigation Series Part 2
Discretionary Spending or Structural Sabotage?
“In public debates, it’s always easier to point at a $20 receipt than a $20 million shortfall.”
SECTION 1: The Public Face of Spending
When the public hears about trustee “spending,” it usually comes through scandal headlines: a trip to a conference, mileage claims, or even a late-night McDonald’s run during a board meeting.
These stories stick because they’re simple. As Trustee Michelle Aarts told us:
“When meetings run until midnight, sometimes trustees make a food run. That McDonald’s receipt gets scrutinized — while massive structural deficits go unaddressed.”
The optics are powerful: $20 spent on fast food draws more outrage than $20 million missing from Special Education. But the truth is more complicated. Trustees don’t control the formulas that drive deficits. They operate inside a system designed to look bloated while being structurally underfunded.
SECTION 2: The “Use-It-or-Lose-It” Trap
One of the least understood features of school board budgeting is the Ministry’s “use-it-or-lose-it” rule.
If trustees or departments don’t spend their full allocation in a given line item, those funds can be clawed back in the next year’s budget.
On paper, that sounds efficient. In practice, it’s wasteful:
Boards are pressured to spend to protect future budgets — even if the allocation doesn’t match this year’s needs.
Trustees are incentivized to burn through discretionary budgets rather than risk losing them.
Programs may be patched together with short-term fixes instead of investing in sustainable solutions.
This creates a cycle where spending looks unnecessary — but is actually forced by the system itself.
SECTION 3: The Missing Receipts
Under normal circumstances, the TDSB publishes detailed trustee expense reports and the Toronto Lands Corporation provides public records of property transactions.
Not anymore. Since the Ministry appointed a supervisor, much of that transparency has gone dark.
This blackout erases accountability at the exact moment the Ministry claims to be enforcing it.
What we still know:
Trustee budgets are modest — covering outreach, mileage, and office costs.
Most so-called “extravagance” is routine operational spending — often under $50.
The real money sinkholes lie elsewhere: CPP, EI, Early Childhood Educators, Special Education — all systematically underfunded by the province.
In the absence of receipts, we can only hypothesize:
Trustees likely feel pressure to fully spend to avoid clawbacks.
Toronto Lands properties may be positioned for sell-offs behind closed doors.
With the Auditor General already confirming TDSB runs with 10% fewer administrators than comparable boards, discretionary budgets are not the deficit driver.
When receipts disappear, suspicion thrives. And suspicion is exactly what the Ministry benefits from.
SECTION 4: What’s Really Driving the Deficit?
The largest shortfalls aren’t fast-food receipts — they’re structural funding gaps created at Queen’s Park:
CPP & EI contributions the province does not fully cover.
ECEs, Special Education, and librarians funded at “teacher equivalents” that don’t match actual wages.
As Aarts explained:
“If the Ministry allocates funding for 200 positions, it’s based on the Provincial wage structure of 200 teachers. But if you need 200 librarians — whose pay is different — that money only covers around 180 librarians.”
These gaps add up to tens of millions annually, locking the TDSB into structural deficit before a single trustee submits an expense claim.
And the Ontario Autism Coalition’s 2025 report underscores the stakes: children with disabilities are being pushed out of classrooms due to staff shortages — while trustees, their strongest advocates, are being sidelined.
SECTION 5: Accountability or Optics?
The Auditor General has already confirmed: TDSB runs leaner than comparable boards in administrative staffing.
Yet trustees are the ones in the crosshairs. Not for deficits they cannot control — but for the optics of how they use their small discretionary budgets.
It’s easier to point to a $20 receipt than to admit to $200 million in engineered shortfalls.
That isn’t accountability. That’s narrative management.
SECTION 6: The Bigger Picture
This is not an accident. It’s a political playbook:
Amplify minor spending optics.
Use deficits as justification for centralized control.
Erase transparency by sidelining trustees and shutting down reporting.
The result? Families lose programs, staff, and safe facilities — while headlines chase fast-food receipts.
What Comes Next
Part 3 will examine Facility Condition Index data and equity gaps — mapping how geography and socio-economic status determine which students thrive and which fall behind.
Because the real question isn’t whether a trustee expensed a sandwich.
It’s whether your child has access to a librarian, a music program, or a safe classroom.
Addendum: Confirming the Fallout
Since the release of this investigation, further reporting across Ontario has underlined just how widespread and disruptive the current reorganization has become.
CBC has documented parents and teachers across Toronto voicing outrage at the abrupt shuffling of students and staff, echoing the very concerns raised here. The story is consistent: stability has been upended with little to no explanation.
Education News Canada carried direct testimony from parents at a Toronto elementary school, calling the process opaque and deeply unsettling for families.
CTV Toronto reported on a peaceful protest at a Scarborough school after beloved teachers were transferred under the new reorganization rules — a rare but telling escalation of frustration into public demonstration.
Even beyond Toronto, the Waterloo Record notes that provincial authorities are pressing for “consistency” in high school exams, reinforcing a broader theme of centralized control.The government argues that “consistency” in assessments and curriculum delivery is about fairness. Standardization ensures that all students across Ontario are learning the same material on the same timeline, so that if a child transfers schools mid-year they are neither significantly ahead nor left behind. On paper, this offers equity of instruction. The tension, however, is that uniformity can also reduce local flexibility—leaving boards, schools, and teachers with less room to adapt to student needs and community contexts, while centralizing control at the provincial level.
And most troubling, the Financial Post relayed parent concerns that the appointed provincial supervisor has been ignoring input altogether — further evidence of a governance structure tilted away from accountability and toward imposed policy.
Taken together, these accounts show the reorganization is not a localized inconvenience but part of a province-wide shift. Parents and educators are left scrambling, while Queen’s Park insists on tightening its grip.
The Old Guardian will continue to track these developments as they evolve.
When elected trustees were cut off mid-sentence, the public lost more than a voice — it lost visibility.
→ Read Part 3: The Shadow Administration.
