Proposed TDSB cuts would hurt students, and Kathleen Wynne knows it

On June 19 the TDSB will be voting on cuts to a range of services and programs in our schools that include the itinerant music instructors that have been prominent in the media.

The situation was similar in 2002, when, after years of funding cuts, the TDSB was facing an $89 million operating shortfall. Kathleen Wynne, then a TDSB trustee, led the fight in refusing to make the cuts to balance the budget. The province took control of the board and appointed Supervisor Paul Christie to run it in place of the elected trustees. Over the year and a half that he was in power, Christie was unable to slash enough to balance the budget.

TDSB proposes cuts to music programs to balance budget

Staff at the Toronto District School Board is calling for $2 million in cuts to instrumental music programs, a 4 per cent drop in every school’s “discretionary budget” and less overtime for workers in the maintenance department, as a way to wipe out the remaining $27 million deficit.

The list of proposed cuts also includes possible merging of smaller night school courses and the layoff of two managerial staff in the popular Grade 1 Reading Recovery program.

TDSB diverting $100 million annually from programs for underprivileged students, report says

More than $100 million annually has been diverted from funding programs for underprivileged students in order for the Toronto District School Board to balance its books , a new report from Social Planning Toronto says.

“The total amount (of funds diverted) is approaching $1 billion,” said John Campey, executive director of Social Planning Toronto, a non-profit community organization committed to improving the lives of Torontonians.

TDSB says politics behind Liberal decision to back Jimmy Hazel’s trades council

A top official with the Toronto’s public school board says he is concerned the Ontario government’s decision to preserve a controversial contract with a problem-plagued trades council is politically motivated.

“(The trades council members) are major contributors to the Liberals,” noted TDSB chair Chris Bolton in an interview with the Star. Having angered teachers with recent legislation, Bolton, a New Democrat, and others at the board speculate that the Liberals are trying to shore up support from other organized labour groups in the province as they prepare for an election.

Province renews TDSB contract with expensive maintenance and trades workers

In a move that dropped jaws at Ontario’s largest school board, the province has suddenly renewed the infamous contract that gave taxpayers in Toronto $3,000 electrical outlet jobs and a $143 pencil sharpener installation.

“It does not even make sense,” Toronto District School Board Chair Chris Bolton told the Star Thursday. “It is a bizarre move that has undone all the work we have been doing.”

Commentary: TDSB, not me, told my 6-year-old son about Newtown

On the way to school Monday my son Benson, who turns 7 on Saturday, was upset, asking me over and over: “Why do people litter?”

A few hours later, his sprightly, sensitive little brain was processing another level of horror, that a man had stormed a U.S. school and shot 20 little kids — kids like him — to death.

My wife and I had chosen to not tell Ben about the Connecticut massacre. Newspapers were flipped, radios hushed.

TDSB Strike: Elementary School Teachers Striking On December 18

TORONTO - The Toronto District School Board says its elementary teachers will be staging a one-day walkout on Tuesday.

The school board — the province's largest — announced the planned walkout on Twitter and its website on Thursday afternoon.

TDSB’s $143 school pencil sharpener just the beginning

The high cost to perform tens of thousands of small jobs — hanging pictures, mounting bulletin boards and yes, more pencil sharpener installations — are costing the Toronto District School Board a small fortune, according to data obtained by the Star.

At one school, Emery Collegiate Institute in North York, a work crew was summoned to hang three pictures one day in March 2011, a job that took seven hours and cost $266. Eight days later, workers were once again called to the same school to “hang three pictures on the wall.” That time, workers billed for 24 hours at a cost to taxpayers of $857.

TDSB trustees want to end 0.5 per cent surcharge to union

Toronto public school trustees want to stop giving Jimmy Hazel’s trades council a piece of the action when outside contractors are hired.

Board chair Chris Bolton said the longstanding 0.5 per cent surcharge on many jobs by outside trades will likely be on the chopping block when the union’s contract expires Aug. 31.

The payments — $2 million to Hazel’s council over the past 10 years in total — are deducted from wages paid to outside trades. Some of those trades say that to make up for the surcharge they inflate the price of their work, which in turn raises the cost to taxpayers.

TDSB budget: Unions call proposed cuts ‘bullying'

Calling it “short-sighted,” a “punch in the eye” and a case of “economic bullying,” union officials lambasted Toronto District School Board trustees Wednesday over a staff proposal to cut hundreds of jobs to help erase an $85 million deficit.

Outraged officials of teachers’ and support workers’ unions urged the board’s human resources committee to reject a recommendation to cut 430 education assistants, 134 school secretaries, 200 high school teachers and 39 elementary vice-principals, among others, to save $51 million.

But caught between what some called “heart-wrenching” cuts and the gut-wrenching threat of government takeover if they don’t balance their books, the committee chose not to take any stand on the cuts, tossing the political hot potato ahead one week to a special meeting of the whole board March 28 dedicated to the staffing issue.

For many, Wednesday became a chance to express anger at the idea of such sweeping cuts, although the total number of jobs that would be lost is about 200 because the board has just hired more than 400 early childhood educators and expects to need 215 more elementary teachers because of rising enrolment.