SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

How Many Other $143 Pencil Sharpeners Are Out There?

The Toronto District School Board has been much in the news lately and there seems no end to the spending outrage.  Now the Toronto Star had originally been told it would cost $3.6 million to get a FOI request fulfilled in order to garner more dirt on how money is spent at the board.  After some public eyebrow-raising, the board backed down on that figure, which would have been in keeping with how the maintenance costs are charged!  I’m sure all of this is to stall for time. The whole mess makes past trustee spending scandals pale in comparison.

This utter lack of transparency is an indication of how little accountability really exists.  For a humble effort at providing SOME sort of transparency, SQE has put whatever school board financial information there is publicly available in one place at www.SunshineOnSchools.ca.  Without having to go through FOI requests, Sunshine on Schools Ontario is a one-stop search and comparison tool.  (Believe me, in some cases it takes quite a bit of digging to find a particular school board’s financial statements.) 

For true accountability on school board finances, the Ministry could start by making all of this publicly available—on every penny from the ministry to the classroom.

So readers, how do your school boards fare?