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“The bad ones like to go to the baseball game and rent a box for $34,000 and in the hotel suites looking over the baseball game that other people can’t afford, and then they say they don’t have money,” he said, referring to a controversy involving a retreat by senior administrators at the Thames Valley District School Board, which the province took control of in April.

Then, Catholic trustees in Brant “decided it would be a great idea to fly to Italy, spend $120,000 ... on their junket and their trip, have a great time in Italy, say it’s for Italian artwork and bring back $100,000 of Italian artwork,” Ford said of an overseas trip taken by four elected officials to purchase religious sculptures for schools. 

“Last time I went to schools, it’s the kids paintings and everything else that are on the wall,” he added.

On the last day of school in June, the province announced it would be sending supervisors in to four more boards — ɫɫ�� public, ɫɫ�� Catholic, Ottawa public and Dufferin-Peel Catholic. 

Then, last week Education Minister Paul Calandra  if he would make changes to school board governance, including the end of elected trustees. 

“If it looks like we can deliver the product better, provide better outcomes for students, better resources for teachers, and give parents certainty, and if that means eliminating trustees, then I’m going to do it,” he told CBC.

The boards now under supervision were running deficits, dipping into reserves or using the proceeds of building sales to help balance the books, but trustees say their financial situations are caused by years of underfunding.

While the province has boosted education funding — more than $30 billion this school year — it has not kept up with actual costs, or inflation, they say.

A memo sent to trustees and directors of education from the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association last week said Calandra’s comments “raise significant concerns.”

“Trustees ensure that school board decisions are made transparently and with direct accountability to the communities they serve,” adding that student achievement here ranks highly around the globe, the memo said.

“There is consensus across the education sector that the system is significantly underfunded. Trustees do not control the amount of funding a school board receives — the provincial government does. Trustees are responsible for overseeing how that funding is allocated at the local level to best meet the needs of students and teachers,” the memo said.

President Kathleen Woodcock said in a statement to the Star that “parents expect and deserve to have a voice in their children’s education, and that’s why locally elected trustees matter ... One of the reasons businesses choose Ontario is our highly educated workforce, and anything that puts the quality of that system at risk should concern us all.”

Karen Brown, past president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said this month that Calandra has ”very little respect” for trustees, adding about one-third of all students attend a board under provincial control and don’t have an elected representative to turn to for assistance. 

Ford, asked Wednesday about the future of school boards, said “we’re going to make sure they balance their books ... people call me every single day. People are done with these school trustees wasting money, and they’re done with a lot of these school boards, but I know Minister Calandra will work with them and try to make sure their budgets are balanced.”