TDSB votes to accept provincial financial help

TDSB service vans and trucks sit idle in a parking lot on Wednesday, July 11, 2012. (Corey Baird/CTV Toronto)

Officials at the Toronto District School Board have indicated that they are ready to accept outside financial help with the board’s finances.

Trustees voted 13-7 Wednesday evening in favour of Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten’s offer to assemble a special team to help balance the board’s books.

The decision was praised by TDSB’s education director Chris Spence.

“There’s some help that we can use to move forward and to get ourselves on firmer financial footing and that’s something that we all want,” he told CTV Toronto on Wednesday.

The proposed team will give the TDSB advice on how to carry out recommendations from a Pricewaterhouse Coopers report into the board’s finances.

One of the major questions being raised is who will be on the province’s board of advisors, and whether those people will have the correct skillset to address the board’s varying issues.

Trustee Howard Goodman is among a number of trustees who are leery of Broten’s proposal.

“The team that she’s planning on sending in is educators and we need business people to look at our purchasing and to look at our culture,” Goodman said Wednesday.

Other trustees have been more aggressive with their criticism, accusing the province of bullying TDSB and asserting Broten isn’t properly carrying out her duties as education minister.

The Pricewaterhouse Coopers audit made 28 recommendations, including closing schools, selling off unused land, cracking down on spending and even outsourcing non-teaching jobs.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Colin D’Mello and files from The Canadian Press