Announcements

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MEDIA RELEASE (March 25, 2025)

TDSB Violated Its Own Bylaws

 

On February 19, TDSB trustees voted 11-7 to rename the three schools named after Sir John A. Macdonald, Henry Dundas, and Egerton Ryerson.

 

This action was outrageous on a number of fronts - not least of which is that the TDSB violated their own bylaws in taking this action by not presenting the financial costs.

 

The Board Bylaws state that all motions that require the TDSB to spend money on a new initiative must include certain financial information to be provided to the trustees, including:

 

(a) The projected cost of the proposal;

(b) The recommended source of the funds;

(c) A framework to explain the expected benefit and outcome; and 

(d) An analysis of the financial implications to ensure the TDSB financial position remains balanced.

 

The renaming of the schools is clearly a new initiative that will cost money,  but according to the public records of the February 19 trustees meeting, the required financial information was not presented to trustees. 

 

Over the past month, we emailed the TDSB Chair, the Director, and other trustees a number of times to confirm if the trustees were presented with the required financial information.

 

Additionally, we submitted the following questions.

1. What is the projected cost of this initiative for these three schools and for subsequent years for this initiative?

2. How many other schools will be renamed each year as set out in the February 19, board report.

3. What other schools have been identified as possible candidates for renaming?    

 

As of today, we have received zero replies or acknowledgements from any of them. 

 

It’s clear that the TDSB's recent decision to rename these schools violated their own Board Bylaws.  

 

Aside from breaching their own Bylaws and lack of disclosure of public expenditures and subsequent stonewalling, we would like to add the following in respect to the name changes:

 

• No historians were consulted as part of their review process.

• The TDSB stated on February 19 that they plan to rename other schools.  Which ones? 

 

About ten other schools in Ontario are named after Macdonald in various cities—Belleville, Ottawa, London, Hamilton, Kitchener, Burlington, Sudbury.  Will their school boards also be deleting his name from these schools?

 

The provincial government needs to step in to stop this by directing the TDSB accordingly.

 

Thank you.