Social Policy in Ontario

Tens of millions of dollars earmarked for Ontario’s most vulnerable students, who are poor or new to the country, are instead being used by school boards to cover other costs, the Auditor General of Ontario has found.

That’s largely because of an outdated funding formula that leaves boards scrambling to cover shortfalls in areas such as special education and gives them huge discretion in whether they use grants the way they are intended, Bonnie Lysyk said in her annual report Wednesday.

At the Toronto Catholic District School Board — one of four boards examined in the report — half of the $46.5 million targeted for needy students through the Learning Opportunities Grant was not used for that purpose in the 2015-16 school year. Instead, that money was diverted to help pay for teacher salaries and special education, the report said.

Of the $23.9 million the Catholic board received for English as a second language students, only 58 per cent was used for that purpose, while the rest went “to alleviate cost pressures in other areas,” Lysyk found.A major cost pressure cited in the report was the explosion of sick days taken by Ontario teachers and other board staff over the last five years. They are entitled to take up to 131 sick days of the 194-day school year at almost full pay.

But Lysyk said the root of the disarray is a funding formula almost 20 years overdue for an overhaul and the fact that school board grants are based on outdated census data, which means grants aren’t properly designated to meet needs.

For example, 80 per cent of Ontario’s 72 school boards currently spend more on special education than the amount the province allocates, which is determined by total enrolment at each board, rather than on the actual number of students who need special ed services.

While the ministry doles out funds for specific purposes, boards have discretion on how to use 84 per cent of operating funds they receive, including the majority of money directed to at-risk students. That opens the door for a system that some critics have described as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Lysyk says the result is a situation where “the needs that these grants were originally intended to meet are potentially not being met.”

While the Toronto Catholic board didn’t violate the rules by redirecting funds, the report highlights the contentious question of how much flexibility boards should have when it comes to grants intended to level the playing field for students facing such barriers as poverty, hunger or whose parents have little education.

Earlier this year, the Toronto District School Board came under fire in a report from the research and advocacy group Social Planning Toronto, which blasted it for diverting $61 million — or half the learning opportunities grant money that was discretionary — to other budget line items.

Lysyk’s report also flagged the fact that because of the way boards report their expenditures, the Ministry of Education doesn’t have an accurate picture of what exactly funds diverted from the learning opportunities grant are paying for.