Ontario to set up school board support offices, starting with those under supervision

TORONTO — Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra has announced that the province is establishing offices within school boards for parents to escalate issues beyond their school — starting with five boards currently under supervision.

The Student and Family Support Offices will give families clear answers and timely solutions for their children’s education, Calandra said in a statement.

“We’re going to continue overhauling an outdated school board governance model so that more resources go into classrooms, teachers have better support and students have the best chance to succeed,” Calandra wrote.

The province has taken control of five school boards due to what it calls mismanagement and the government says the offices in those boards will open in January and all other boards will be expected to open their offices by Sept. 1.

Calandra has said he can’t see ever handing the boards currently under supervision back to trustees and he is also looking closely at eliminating the position of trustee entirely.

Liberal parliamentary leader John Fraser said the creation of the support offices suggests Calandra will go ahead with that.

“This government, it doesn’t respect democracy here, it doesn’t respect local democracy,” he said Thursday.

“We’re a big province. We’re huge. We have almost 5,000 schools, and the minister of education thinks he can run everything from downtown Toronto in an office at Queen’s Park and it’s not going to work.”

NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Calandra’s plan is not clear.

“He acts impulsively, removes trustees who have local accountability to the public and then doesn’t replace them with anything else, and then wonders why everybody out there is unhappy, why people, parents can’t get the answers they need suddenly,” she said at an unrelated press conference.

The Progressive Conservative government is also fast-tracking a bill that would allow the minister of education to more easily place school boards under supervision.

Calandra has suggested that once the bill passes, the government will take control of more school boards.

The province has appointed supervisors to the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board and the Thames Valley District School Board.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2025.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press