A sweeping report on the Toronto District School Board identifies a raft of structural problems, from micromanaging trustees who stay in office too long to streaming that puts a disproportionate number of wealthier kids into academic courses to a culture at board headquarters that separates top administrators into an “in-crowd” and an “out-crowd.”
The review panel, led by former Toronto mayor Barbara Hall, traces the problems all the way back to 1998, when seven different boards merged to form the country’s largest school system, with nearly 600 schools and 232,000 students. The previous boards all had different cultures, including different roles for trustees, leading to confusion in the amalgamated organization.
The province, Ms. Hall recommends, should appoint a supervisor to fix the board and a board secretary with expertise in governance to help trustees do their jobs more effectively. And if there is little progress within a year, the board should be split up into two or more smaller ones.
The government, which released the report at 8 p.m. Friday after sitting on it since August, has so far not revealed whether it will follow Ms. Hall’s advice. (more...)
One must set priorities:
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