“I’ve heard the province took over the school board. What does that mean?”
At present, ~40% of Ontario schools have been taken over by the provincial government as the Minister of Education moves to further centralize power over education. The Peel District School Board was the 8th board placed under Ministry supervision by current Minister of Education, Paul Calandra. On January 28th the board was initially placed under a “14-day provisional supervision” under the Minister’s claims that the board had run five years of deficits and takeover was needed to stop the imminent firing of 60 classroom teachers. Both of these claims were false, and proven false through publicly available documentation.
When the board was taken over in January, trustees were immediately prohibited from performing our elected roles and stopped receiving our honoraria (compensation), but were mandated to work with PDSB Senior Team to prepare a report justifying why our board should be restored to our governance. Our report answered the Minister’s claims with evidence. Provisional supervision continued for 5.5 weeks without answer while the Minister sought a reason to justify having taken over the board, including going through our expenses and going to the Integrity Commissioner to unsuccessfully try to find strikes against us, before we were informed by press release that the board would remain under supervision indefinitely.
In the past, in all other times when boards have been placed under Ministry supervision, trustees have remained active in their roles with adjusted responsibilities. Only under Paul Calandra have democratically elected trustees been removed from their roles entirely, with all board and almost all committee meetings cancelled and the loss of transparency, accountability, and local voice, and connection between communities and the activities of their local boards.
In unsupervised boards, parents have:
– a trustee to help them navigate challenges or find answers to their questions
– a local advocate who knows their community and local schools, and has been elected to represent local kids and families
– clarity around decisions being made within the school board
– the ability to delegate to committees about their concerns
– full access to the budget process over the months it takes to prepare, and context to the decisions made
The Minister has appointed supervisors at the boards he has taken over. The supervisors intentionally come from outside education and are not local to the communities they’ve been appointed to. PDSB’s supervisor is Heather Watt. When I reached out to the government in early April for clarity regarding student and family supports during supervision, Paul Calandra responded through an email in June to let me know that all questions and concerns can be referred directly to Heather Watt at heather.watt@peelsb.com.
Trustees are required to balance our budgets. Each year PDSB has seen a growing gap in funding, particularly regarding special education. For the 2025-26 school year, PDSB was underfunded for special education by $45 million. When special education is underfunded, it affects every school, every classroom, and every student. For this reason, we prioritize spending here, and needed to pull $45 million from other priority spending to help our programs function, and balanced the budget. We still need to do more to offer the supports and resources every child needs to thrive. In that budget cycle I advocated for every additional Educational Assistant (EA) we could afford, and worked together with my colleagues to accomplish this. The end result was an additional 121.5 EAs.
This year the budget was overseen by the supervisor with no consultation, transparency, or accountability. While our budget packages are typically over 100 pages, this year’s was only 13 and included a 23% cut to special education supports, other cuts to student resources, a large boost to capital spending, and a $10.9 million deficit.
Trustees would never have passed this budget and Peel students, families, and teachers and education workers deserve transparency and accountability.
See the budgets:
2025-26 (Board of Trustees)
2026-27 (Supervisor)
Hundreds of teachers and EAs have been laid off for the 2026-27 school year, in a board where our schools are already understaffed due to Ministry funding and mandated maximum ratios. At a time when student safety is a primary concern, fewer adults in our buildings will present further challenges. We have incredible teachers and education workers in our board and they work tirelessly to give our kids a great start. It is important that they have the supports and resources they need to provide the education our children deserve.
The Peel District School Board has not had a credible reason for our takeover. There are suggestions we lost control because a) we advocated for the funding needed to properly support special education and b) we have land assets the government is interested in. Parents in Mississauga, Brampton, and Caledon deserve to have our local voice, transparency, and accountability in our children’s schools. We have advocated for our board to be returned to our own governance and will continue to advocate for that.
Please reach out to chat if you have any questions or concerns, but please also let the Premier, Heather Watt, and our local MPPs know about any challenges happening in our schools right now. By removing trustees, the provincial government has taken responsibility and they must be made aware and brought in to support as necessary.
| Supervisor | Heather Watt | unknown | heather.watt@peelsb.com |
| Premier | Doug Ford | 416-325-7635 | doug.fordco@pc.ola.org |
| Brampton Centre | Charmaine Williams | 905-454-1233 | charmaine.williams@pc.ola.org |
| Brampton East | Hardeep Singh Grewal | 905-799-3939 | hardeep.grewal@pc.ola.org |
| Brampton North | Graham McGregor | 289-298-1049 | graham.mcgregor@pc.ola.org |
| Brampton South | Prabmeet Sarkaria | 905-796-8669 | prabmeet.sarkaria@pc.ola.org |
| Brampton West | Amarjot Sandhu | 905-595-1532 | amarjot.sandhu@pc.ola.org |
| Dufferin-Caledon | Sylvia Jones | 519-941-7751 | sylvia.jones@pc.ola.org |
| Mississauga Centre | Natalia Kusendova-Bashta | 905-890-1901 | natalia.kusendova@pc.ola.org |
| Mississauga East – Cooksville | Silvia Gualtieri | 905-238-1751 | silvia.gualtieri@pc.ola.org |
| Mississauga – Erin Mills | Sheref Sabawy | 905-820-8851 | sheref.sabawy@pc.ola.org |
| Mississauga – Lakeshore | Rudy Cuzzetto | 905-274-8228 | rudy.cuzzetto@pc.ola.org |
| Mississauga – Malton | Deepak Anand | 905-696-0367 | deepak.anandco@pc.ola.org |
| Mississauga – Streetsville | Nina Tangri | 905-569-1643 | nina.tangri@pc.ola.org |
(July 3rd) Regarding Supervisor Heather Watt’s budget for the 2026-27 school year:
(May 19th) Regarding Paul Calandra’s direction to remove all virtual access to PDSB’s Special Edcucation Advisory Committee meetings without advance notice. Parents will now only know what’s happening in SEAC if they make the trip to the Central Board Office – or if a community member attends and livestreams it (I did). Board and committee meetings at unsupervised boards are all public, recorded, and livestreamed. All but SEAC and Parent Involvement Committee (PIC) have been cancelled at supervised boards, and access has been reduced: