Why the Ontario government took over control of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

After years of division and unbalanced budgets, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is being taken over by the Ontario government. 

Education Minister Paul Calandra made the announcement Friday, saying the OCDSB “has failed in its responsibilities to parents and students by losing sight of its core mission — ensuring student success.” 

Supervisors will also be appointed to the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board.

Robert Plamondon, a Fellow of the Chartered Professional Accountants with a 35-year career in governance, finance, public policy and public administration, will be appointed supervisor of the OCDSB. He will oversee spending “to address concerns regarding growing deficits, depleting reserves and ongoing cases of mismanagement.” 

In April, Calandra announced Ottawa’s public board would be investigated after posting deficit budgets for four straight years. The audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP found that the “majority of savings” initiatives during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years were introduced by OCDSB management without requiring approval. The report shows $35 million in savings were adopted by management without requiring trustee approval, while trustees approved $9 million in savings, reported CTV. 

No evidence of “serious financial mismanagement” was found, but the audit recommended the province cease control of the OCDSB due to its accumulated deficit in 2023-24 and probable accumulated deficits for 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.

When working on the 2025-2026 school year budget, trustees were told they would need to find upwards of $20 million in savings. 

In early June, a $1.2 billion balanced budget was approved by trustees, but it came with $18 million in spending cuts. To help ease their financial burden, 135 positions were to be eliminated, along with $4.98 million in spending reductions for special education, a $5.97 million reduction for administration, and another $4.22 million for instruction. 

Board staff said more cuts were expected, including to specialized education and adult high school programs. The OCDSB is also exploring selling off vacant properties, including McGregor Easson Public School on Dynes Rd. 

Reaction from local trustees

Barrhaven Trustee Donna Blackburn, who noted she was speaking as herself and not on behalf of the board, said she was not surprised by the outcome, but felt being taken over by a supervisor was not needed. 

“There's no doubt in anybody's mind who's heavily involved in education, such as myself, that we are woefully funded by the provincial government, particularly when it comes to special education,” Blackburn told the Lookout. “But on the other hand, there are times when this board of trustees and other boards of trustees have not conducted themselves in a fiscally responsible manner.”

Blackburn said issues with the board began when it voted whether or not to support a mask mandate in schools, and then never fully recovered. She said the role of a trustee is not to get involved in the day-to-day operations of a school board – something the Barrhaven representative thinks has happened in the past. 

Examples included when the OCDSB voted to close Rideau High School due to low student enrollment. It was a 7-5 vote, and has led to saving money while providing students with more options, said Blackburn. 

Blackburn also raised the issue of whether or not to close alternative schools – a controversial matter which was first debated in 2009 – and came up again earlier this year when the OCDSB voted to phase them out. 

“All those years the program continued to operate and we were spending money on transportation that we shouldn't have been spending money on – all for schools that were underutilized," she said. 

Another issue Blackburn thinks led to the province taking over control was how trustees have treated board staff. 

“Trustees are not the official opposition to school board staff. And to treat them disrespectfully has cost us a lot because we have lost a substantial amount of senior personnel to other districts and other organizations,” said Blackburn. 

“Look at our meanings. We regularly do not finish our agendas. Other boards don't function like that. The Ottawa Catholic Board finishes their agenda by nine o'clock at night,” she added. “Meanwhile, we continue to make staff sit there till 11 o'clock at night and ask questions in a very disrespectful way. We challenge people's integrity. We challenge people's commitment to our kids. And it's very disturbing.”

In the last year, three trustees have stepped down from the OCDSB. 

Kanata’s Alysha Aziz resigned last July due to “personal reasons.” Then, at the beginning of June, Capital/Alta Vista Trustee Nili Kaplan-Myrth stepped aside, saying the board was "entrenched in internal toxicity.” Finally, last week, Somerset’s Justine Bell wrote a letter to her constituents stating she was leaving to spend time with family. For the last few years Bell has been living part-time in Mexico, where she recently adopted a daughter. 

The need for more provincial funding 

Rideau-Vanier/Rideau-Rockcliffe Trustee Lyra Evans said she was shocked by Friday's announcement because the OCDSB was able to pass a balanced budget. 

“We made the hard decisions we needed to,” said Evans.

But many of the decisions made were not endorsed by Evans, who said some of the recent cuts will impact her communities' students the most. 

“I am the Trustee for Vanier and Lowertown, where there are significant blocks of deep poverty. One of my focuses walloping on the board has been trying to make sure that the decisions that we make do not disproportionately negatively impact the communities that I serve," she said. 

“As I see it, the role of public education is to ensure that anybody who goes through the public education system comes out the other end with an equal stake in all of the pathways to life,” Evans added. “I want to make sure that the universities are taking students from all backgrounds, from all walks of life, from all neighbourhoods, and that we're not gatekeeping some of the best-paying, some of the most prestigious employment opportunities behind the postal code you grew up in.”

All OCDSB trustees seem to agree that what's got them into such a financial mess is not so much the internal decisions made, but more so the lack of educational funding coming from the province. 

For example, the OCDSB has been spending $14 million more on special education than it gets in provincial funding. But they are not alone. An analysis by the Ontario Public School Boards Association released in May, showed there’s a province-wide funding gap of more than $1 billion.

The Ontario government said it sees the situation differently, noting it has provided “record funding” for education, including $30.3 billion in 2025-26, $2 billion to renew and improve schools and $1.3 billion through the Capital Priorities program to support new schools and expansions, reported the Ottawa Citizen. 

What’s the best outcome? 

“My hope is that the ministry realizes that we have been judicious with the resources that have been entrusted to us. We have made the hard decisions to reduce the expenses to align with the ministry’s budget, despite the fact that we have pointed out we are not adequately funded in a number of key areas,” said Evans. “I hope the supervisor comes in, takes a look at the book, and says that they made the decisions they had to. Then everything is good to go in September. But that is not the scenario I think is most likely.”

This is not the first time the OCDSB has had its finances taken over by the provincial government. It happened in the mid-2000s and lasted a few years, said Evans.

Citing the loss of democracy and free speech, Evans said her fear is the takeover could last until the next municipal election in fall 2026. She also has concerns that the Ontario government could try to cut other programs the board recently fought to save.

“We are the only district, to my knowledge, in Ontario that offers French immersion to any student who wants it, regardless of geography or the number of students who have previously enrolled,” said Evans. “Removing that program would save the district money, but it's something that would anger 60 per cent of parents. We don't want to return to a lottery system, which is what many districts in Ontario use, which is where there's a certain number of spots, and as soon as that number of people exceeds the number of slots, they just start drawing names out of a hat.”

Calanda did not provide a timeline as to when the province would hand control back to the school board.