“Toronto in early 2013 finds itself facing a double crisis of governance. The first, of course, is at City Hall, where the mayor is threatened with removal for conflict of interest. The second is at the school board.

With a quarter of a million students and nearly 600 schools, the Toronto District School Board is the biggest in Canada and the fourth biggest in North America. It spends about $3-billion a year, a third as much as City Hall. It is a mammoth with a task that is vital to the city’s future, and it is in complete disarray.

Its education director, Chris Spence, has just resigned in a plagiarism scandal. Its trustees are locked in a bitter power struggle with the provincial Education Ministry. Its teachers are in revolt.

The botched handling of Friday’s strike threat was sadly typical of the way things are going at the TDSB. Parents of elementary-school children went to bed on Thursday night believing their kids would have a day off. Authorities told them that school was cancelled. They woke up to find that schools were open after all. The labour board had ruled against the strike and the TDSB had flip-flopped. Families across the city scrambled to rearrange their lives, again.

Why is the school board so dysfunctional? A decade ago, the provincial government divested the board of all authority and appointed a supervisor in its place when it failed to balance its budget. Last year, as the board again struggled with money problems, Queen’s Park threatened to take over again.

Under pressure, the board let independent consultants scrutinize its operations. They found out-of-control absenteeism, overbudget building projects, underutilized schools and inefficient maintenance. The board, fearing a threat to its autonomy, bridled at the findings. It was even more offended when the province offered to send in a “special assistance team” to help trustees get it together.

The final straw for trustees came when the government imposed a renewed contract on skilled-trades workers, as it did for teachers. This week, TDSB chair Chris Bolton fired off an angry letter to Education Minister Laurel Broten that said the move had foreclosed the very reforms to labour practices that the province was demanding.

The board has a point when it argues that Queen’s Park demands spending control from the board while imposing obligations like full-day kindergarten without supplying enough money to pay for them. Still, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the board is in over its head.

Turnout for electing school trustees is low, and some of them have been around for decades. Many seem to see their job as advocating for community interest groups rather than representing the common interest. The board consistently votes against measures, such as closing underused schools or selling off vacant school lands, that might help the system pay its bills but would anger constituents.

The size and budget of the TDSB have grown by leaps since municipal amalgamation, leaving an immense, bureaucratic organization with weak leadership and entrenched, self-serving unions. The whole outfit, headquartered in its North York bunker, exudes the scent of rot. It cries out for reform and renewal.

In big cities like New York or Chicago, the head of schools is a high-profile position filled by high-calibre individuals. The TDSB needs a chief executive with experience in the business world or the broader public sector at complex administration.

“They have rightly paid the most attention to their education function,” says Ben Levin, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, “but they are also a very large property management and transportation and human-resources operation and they have to make sure these are managed effectively and efficiently.”

As embarrassing and painful as it is for the TDSB, Chris Spence’s departure is a golden opportunity to bring better management to Toronto’s troubled school system.  MARCUS GEE’s ARTICLE PUBLISHED UNDER BYLINE:   Dysfunctional TDSB cries out for reform and renewal by The Globe and Mail  Last updated Saturday, Jan. 12 2013, 9:57 AM EST

former director Spence 090113 pic credit J.P. MOCZULSKI / The Globe and Mail

It has been a thoroughly rotten week for the Toronto District School Board. Its much-admired education director, Chris Spence, has been caught plagiarizing. Its fiscal management is under scrutiny from the provincial government, which sent in consultants this week to help fix things. And, oh, its elementary-school teachers, like their colleagues around the province, are planning to walk off the job on Friday to protest draconian legislation imposing labour contracts.

So it is no wonder that the mood was sullen when board trustees met Wednesday evening in an emergency session. Just before it got under way, Mr. Spence addressed reporters in the North York office building that serves as TDSB headquarters. The walls of his office are hung with pictures of Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, inspirational figures for a guy who came to Canada as a young black immigrant from the United Kingdom and built a career first in football, then in education. Mr. Spence looked shaken as he read from a long and abject apology, posted earlier on the board’s web site, for plagiarizing parts of an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star.

Minutes later, in the boardroom downstairs, board chair Chris Bolton announced that trustees would meet again within days to discuss what, if anything, to do about the Spence issue. In the meantime, it has other troubles. Earlier this week, Mr. Bolton sent a strongly worded letter to the Education Minister, Laurel Broten, complaining that she had put the board in an “untenable position” by imposing a contract deal on the board’s skilled-trades workers. That, said Mr. Bolton, prevented the board from making changes that might have saved it millions.

Relations between the board and Queen’s Park have been souring for months.The provincial government froze the board’s capital spending on new projects after revelations about cost overruns in the renovation of Nelson Mandela Park Public School. A consultants’ report found that the board could save millions by cracking down on absenteeism, making better use of underutilized school properties and doing a better job with procurement. To help get the board’s finances in shape, the government offered a Special Assistance Team of advisers.

All this is bitterly resented by the trustees. Mr. Bolton’s harsh letter was the expression of anger that has been simmering for some time. The way many of them see it, the province imposes financial responsibilities on the board such as all-day kindergarten, fails to supply enough money to pay for them and then blames the board for failing to balance its books.

One by one on Wednesday evening, trustees stood to to denounce provincial high-handedness. One said that Queen’s Park would unleash a “bag of snakes” if it ran roughshod over the board and the communities it represents. Another insisted that “despite media reports,” the board had worked diligently to control costs. Yet another told the provincial advisers that “we’re not exactly thrilled that you’re here,” but promised to work with them anyway. It was not exactly a rebellion – Queen’s Park, which controls the purse strings, holds the high cards here – but the board has lapsed into a sort of wounded sulk – and that isn’t doing anyone any good.                                                  video credits,                     MARCUS GEE’s article published  by  The Globe and Mail  Published Thursday, Jan. 10 2013, 6:00 AM with byline:      Sour mood of TDSB’s trustees isn’t doing anyone any good

In advance of the October 2011 provincial election, there are several organizations that are releasing video clips that speak for educationers and the students they serve.  Here are three:

A statement from ETFO re standardized testing (EQAO)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3VqK4i4fFg

A statement by Catholic teachers, OECTA ….   http://www.youtube.com/user/OECTASpeaks

Working Families has started a television commercial campaign …..http://www.workingfamilies.ca

Let us know what you think of these messages.