By David Clandfield

This is the first of a series of articles on education finance and governance policy in Toronto that will eventually be worked into book form for Education Action: Toronto.

On my walk home from a doctor’s appointment one morning recently, I passed two inner city schools of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). One carried a big billboard announcing the school’s Facilities Renewal program (in a 10-year-old building with a 7-year-old yard). The words “Investing in Children” leapt from the billboard in bold type. Justification for spending taxpayers’ money on school buildings? The other carried a big announcement about an upcoming PART meeting for its family of schools. The TDSB’s Program Area Review Team process (the acronym was not explained on the notice) involves public consultation meetings to help the Board re-organize its programs in a group of neighbourhood schools. The process is viewed by many as the harbinger of a decision to close one of the schools in the group. That school building and its grounds can then be leased out or sold off. Saving taxpayers’ money by cashing in the investment in children?

Investing in children and the spectre of school closures: the public face of our inner-city schools. Children are an investment prospect; public property is disposable. Of course, we can easily disregard such ironies. Investment could be viewed as just an ill-chosen metaphor and school closure just one rational response to the current round of declining enrolments. But the two terms inadvertently point to a harsher reality for inner city education. And the annual school board budget season gives us another opportunity to reflect on that harsh reality and to suggest alternatives in both the short and long term.

Both these schools are in the TDSB Model Schools for Inner Cities program. They are schools in “priority areas.” These are areas with a high proportion of poor, racialized populations considered vulnerable, “at risk.” They have higher rates of drop-outs and suspensions, lower rates of entry into post-secondary education. As Model Schools they are designated as sites for innovative teaching, strong support services, strong community links, continuing evaluation of students and programs, and sharing “successful practice.” The number of such schools has just been doubled to over one hundred such schools out of almost 600 schools in the Toronto. In spite of such laudable goals, however, their budget allocation is minimal – about $8 million out of a Provincial grant to the TDSB of $142.7 million for so-called Learning Opportunities. This Learning Opportunities Grant (LOG) was designed to recognize the increased costs of meeting the educational needs of vulnerable populations in priority neighbourhoods, which is exactly what “models schools” were set up to do. Why then is so little of the grant allocated to the Model Schools’ budget? The quick answer is that the Board didn’t have to spend the money on vulnerable kids; it wasn’t “sweatered.” The $142.7 million went directly into the TDSB general revenue, and while some of the money was spent on inner-city schools in one way or another (including Model Schools) most of it wasn’t. Facing a major reduction in Provincial funding overall (requiring another $55 million to be stripped from this year’s budget – the 14th year in a row of Board cutbacks) trustees found other places for the money they did get. More on this later.

What’s worth stressing at this point is that poor schools (those that are high on the Learning Opportunities Index) continue to have a very tough time finding extra funds to make up for their lack of resources. Take the Model Schools, for example.

Although the number of Model Schools was being doubled, the budget to support them was not. The Inner City Advisory Committee did request an increase of $425,000. That’s not even a 20% increase in money for a 100% growth in the program, an efficiency to warm the cockles of any neo-liberal’s heart, you might have thought. But the TDSB’s Budget Committee voted it down. The disappointment did not end there. In order to balance the budget, staff had recommended a sweeping series of cuts to reduce the deficit $55 million or so, including a $30 million in large capital repairs. The voting members of the committee, who presumably viewed large capital repairs as Investing in Children as the billboard says, asked staff to reconsider this capital repair cut and seek savings from a much longer list of so-called unfunded programs (i.e. ones not mandated and fully paid for by the province). That list ominously included the Model Schools. Despondency loomed over the Model Schools staff and their supporters. But a rearguard option saved the day at the full Board meeting, and enough votes were assembled to both save the Model Schools from any cuts and to add the $425,000 requested. Despondency turned to euphoria. They love us, they really love us. Progressive forces rule. The poor we shall not always have with us. Of course, I exaggerate. But the war on poverty and the racialized working class has not been won. Nothing radical enough to be thought of as a war has begun. Even if the occasional skirmish such as this one yields a semblance of victory.

The broader question of the distribution of resources to school populations of varying wealth and influence needs to be opened again and Education Action: Toronto is beginning one such investigation. There is already an ample supply of data to show that any significant redirection of resources from the wealthier schools’ funds to the schools of the most needy is a mirage.

I am going to take two examples: school budgets and school fund-raising.

School Budgets – The Learning Opportunities Supplement

The TDSB lists every school budget on its website. The budget statement shows the source of each school’s TDSB allocations except for staffing and payroll. The various lines include allowances for the library and the school office, professional development, a variety of specialized programs, and the Learning Opportunities supplement. The list is a little longer for secondary schools and includes student financial assistance and grants for the elite International Baccalaureate program. These latter programs and the funds distributed to support them merit closer study, but that will come at a later time. For now we shall concentrate on one or two programs in the elementary schools.

I should begin by saying that I derive this part of my data from a sole source: the latest school budgets posted (2009-2010). I propose to use this information in batches large enough to ensure that any inaccuracies and anomalies will shrink into insignificance against the bigger picture.

The Learning Opportunities supplement for elementary and middle schools amounted in 2009-2010 to a sum of just under $1.2 million. It is allocated according to the full-time equivalent enrolment in each school (children in the school for half a day count half). The base amount of the allocation is $15 per pupil.

But the per-pupil amount is weighted by the Learning Opportunities Index (LOI), a formula that takes into account such issues as income, parental education, and single-parent families. The $15 per pupil is multiplied by the LOI listing for each school. In very broad terms, the poorer the families of the schoolchildren, the higher the LOI multiplier will be and the greater the per-pupil allocation the school will receive. The number one (read “neediest”) school on the LOI in 2009 had a factor of 0.9927788, which yielded an allocation of $14.89 per pupil. The lowest on the list (read “wealthiest”) had a factor of 0.0000932, which yielded an allocation of $0 per pupil. The money apparently went where it was most needed, all $1.2 million of it. That is to say, $1.2 million of the $142.7 million generated from the province in recognition of the special needs of these school populations.

If we break the 475 elementary and middle schools listed in the 2009 LOI into five groups we get the following picture according to LOI-measured need. They are grouped from the least needy (400-475 on the LOI) to the most needy (1-99 on the LOI):

LOI Rank	FTE enrolment	as % of all	LO Supplement $	as % of all $$
400-475	25 867.0	16.69%	$26 184	2.22%
300-399	32 721.5	21.11%	$153 261	12.99%
200-299	31 493.5	20.32%	$235 101	19.93%
100-199	33 003.0	21.29%	$343 660	29.14%
001-099	31 896.5	20.58%	$427 670	36.26%
Totals	154 981		$1 179 527

The picture emerges of a finely graded progressive distribution according to need. The wealthier schools (300-475) have about 38% of the enrolment and receive about 15% of the Learning Opportunities Supplement. The needier schools (001-199) have about 42% of the enrolment and receive about 65% of the Learning Opportunities Supplement. It is not as steep a progression as we might have expected or wanted, but even the wealthier schools have some children enrolled from poorer backgrounds. If the money helps offset the cost of waiving their fees for field trips or sundry purchases, for example, then it is being used where need dictates.

School Budgets – The French Immersion/Extended French Supplement

The discovery of this needs-related re-distribution of program funds begs the question about other funds distributed unevenly to schools. Do they echo this particular distribution or offset it in favour of the wealthier school populations? The second part of this study will look at funding for Arts, Family Studies, Instrumental Music, etc. But a little lower down is the budget line for French immersion and extended French. These are both programs that require additional expenditures, since French-language materials (as one example) cost more for reasons of scale. Enrolment in these programs is optional and only 97 elementary and middle schools offer Immersion or extended French programs. So the distribution of funds at a flat $15 per pupil enrolled is uneven by virtue of unevenness in the location of the enrolment. I shall use the same model for the French Immersion and Extended French Supplement as I did for the Learning Opportunities Supplement.

LOI Rank	FTE enrolment	as % of all	LO Supplement $	as % of all $$
400-475	25 867.0	16.69%	$81 495	35.11%
300-399	32 721.5	21.11%	$53 145	22.90%
200-299	31 493.5	20.32%	$54 218	23.36%
100-199	33 003.0	21.29%	$24 608	10.60%
001-099	31 896.5	20.58%	$18 618	8.02%
Total	154 981.5		$232 084

The picture emerges of a different distribution according to need. The wealthier schools (300-475) have about 38% of the system enrolment and receive about 58% of the French Immersion/Extended French Supplement. The needier schools (001-199) have about 42% of the system enrolment and receive about 19% of the of the French Immersion/Extended French Supplement. The distribution is the opposite of the Learning Opportunities Supplement. French Immersion and Extended French are programs that are more readily available to and more heavily populated by the wealthier populations in our schools. The ratio of FI/EF enrolments to total enrolments in the 400-level LOI schools is about 1 to 5. In the LOI schools rated 001-099 on the LOI, the ratio is 1 to 25. We have known this ever since Paul Olson did his sociological analysis of French immersion back in the 1980s. But it is important to understand that the impact of this program funding is to offset the funds made available for needy schools. Of course, it is clear that this is only a partial offset. The total amount distributed this way is just under a quarter of the amount in the Learning Opportunities Supplement.

Leaving aside the rest of the local elementary and secondary school budgets for further study, we can safely say that the rest of the offset of the effects of the Learning Opportunities Supplement re-distribution is probably met through local school fund-raising.

School-Based Revenue Generation – Fees and Fund-raising

Hefty amounts of money are generated locally in schools through a variety of means, whether by fees and charges or fundraising and donations. The Province has been collecting information about this on a school-by-school basis, but it was only in February of this year that a Freedom of Information request by the Toronto Star brought it to light on the Star website for the 2008-2009 year for all the school boards in the GTA. The information contained in those figures has been augmented by the contents of a Briefing Note to the TDSB’s Inner City Advisory Committee dated March 4, 2011. It reports on the total fundraising revenues and expenditures for twenty wealthiest LOI schools and the twenty neediest LOI schools. Either way, the news is generally the same. Schools raise more money locally, the wealthier they are. That is hardly a surprise, but the amounts involved may well be as we shall shortly see.

This year a sub-committee of the Inner City Advisory Committee has been looking at this and a research study by Social Planning Toronto is now under way. The matter is very complicated, because the data is very limited. We do know that People for Education has consistently voiced its concern over the increasing incidence of fund-raising, fees and sundry charges in Ontario’s publicly funded schools. But even with the Ministry’s tables outlining funds raised by school, we do not have information on the various methods used to take funds in at the school level, nor do we know how schools and their communities spend the funds they do take in. What we do have are the aggregate amounts from two conduits for the money. There are revenues raised directly by the school through fees and charges, augmented by donations to the school. And there are the revenues of the Parent Councils. But even with this information, we do not know how much is raised by other bodies associated with the school, such as Home and School groups, student groups, private foundations, or the Friends of such and such a School, who are not required to report their finances to the Ministry and who may use the money to purchase gifts in kind for the school that go unreported. Much research would be needed to unearth these additional revenues. The Friends of one small elementary school in an affluent neighbourhood conducts an Annual Giving Campaign intended to raise $40,000 per annum and includes on its website the suggestion that $300 is a suitable sum per family. In addition to this, we do not know how much of school-generated revenue comes from corporate rather individual sources, or what is expected in return for such corporate largesse whatever form it may take.

Nor do we know how much of the revenues generated by the school and its community is not used for that school’s expenditures at all, but is intended rather to support other charitable works, or, as in the case of the most prolific fund-raising school, includes a modest donation to a school serving a poorer population.

So, while I am fairly comfortable using the above grid analysis for school-based budgets, I must beg considerable caution in its use for the reporting of school-based revenue generation. The figures are probably incomplete and may well under-report the fund-raising efforts that occur among the wealthiest school populations. This is a work in progress, as the saying goes. I have seen a draft of the Social Planning Toronto (SPT) report and it promises to provide a very thorough analysis, going much further than what I am offering here. It repeats the same general message, but SPT is still obliged to work with the same imperfect data. It will be noticed that I have used somewhat different groupings of the data than those used by SPT, in order to match the earlier grids. This time the enrolment is a headcount rather than the full-time equivalent, since these are not budget allocations. There are two tables. The first table the total of all school-generated revenue:

LOI ranking	Headcount	as % of all	Total funds raised	as % of all $$
400-475	28 642	16.39%	$7 764 902	32.21%
300-399	36 581	20.94%	$6 478 712	26.87%
200-299	35 948	20.58%	$4 501 793	18.67%
100-199	37 019	21.19%	$3 157 412	13.10%
001-099	3 ,524	20.91%	$2 206 343	9.15%
Total	174 714		$24 109 162

LOI ranking Headcount as % of all Total funds raised as % of all $$ 400-475 28,642 16.39% $7,764,902 32.21% 300-399 36,581 20.94% $6,478,712 26.87% 200-299 35,948 20.58% $4,501,793 18.67% 100-199 37,019 21.19% $3,157,412 13.10% 001-099 36,524 20.91% $2,206,343 9.15%
Total 174,714 $ 24,109,162

The picture that emerges is strikingly similar to the distribution of French Immersion and Extended French Supplements. The wealthier schools (300-475) have about 37% of the system headcount and raise about 59% of the school-generated funds reported to the Ministry. The needier schools (001-199) have about 42% of the system headcount and raise about 22% of the school-generated funds reported to the Ministry. But the situation becomes quite dramatic when we consider only those sums raised and reported by the Parent Councils in this second table.

LOI ranking Headcount as % of all Total funds raised as % of all $$ 400-475 28,642 16.39% $2,986,223 50.79% 300-399 36,581 20.94% $1,304,905 22.19% 200-299 35,948 20.58% $888,483 15.11% 100-199 37,019 21.19% $478,229 8.13% 001-099 36,524 20.91% $221,915 3.77%
Total 174,714 $ 5,879,755

Parent Councils at the 170 wealthier schools with 37% of the school population raise 73% of the money in this category, while those at the 199 needier schools raise less than 12%.

As long as we do not know what all this money is spent on, we can only surmise that a good deal of it does go to the schools and their communities. The school with the lowest LOI on the TDSB, the wealthiest therefore, raised almost $350,000 in 2008-09, with the Parent Council reporting over $307,000 as their contribution to that sum. That amounts to somewhat more than $1,000 per pupil enrolled in the school. A school with a large immigrant population in high-rises and assisted housing downtown reports $1,406 in school-generated revenues, none of which comes from the parent council. This amounts to $2.10 per pupil enrolled in that school. The disparities are enormous both at the individual school level and across the system. And the sums are sufficiently large as to suggest that both the Learning Opportunities Supplement and a good part of the budget for the Model Schools for Inner Cities are being matched elsewhere within the TDSB funding allocations alluded to above, or latterly through school-imposed fees and charges, fund-raising and donations. Perhaps even completely offset.

So when we breathe a sigh of relief that the Model Schools survived the latest round of cuts with a modest augmentation, let us not imagine that we are sharing the surpluses of the wealthy and successful among the struggling poor. We are barely keeping up, if at all.

What can be done?

As for what can be done now, I recommend that we first await the final SPT report, since it will certainly bring a series of recommendations to debate when the summer is over. But regardless of its conclusions and recommendations, we must press for a greater allocation of funds to schools in communities that face the extreme challenges of poverty, especially racialized poverty, an allocation that cannot be used to defray other costs but must be spent on making a real difference to these schools and their communities. We shall also need to have much more detailed reporting of school-based fees and fund-raising, so that we can get a better handle on how far the financial inequities arising from them have taken us.

We would also recommend against any government or board scheme that would compulsorily deflect any portion of the proceeds of local community fund-raising to other communities. That’s asking voluntary donations to do the job that taxes are expected to achieve. The idea of twinning “rich” and “poor” schools in fund-raising efforts seems even worse. If we believe that equitable access to education is the right and responsibility of every citizen—and not only of every child—then it is the right and the responsibility of us all to fund it equitably. That can only be reliably done through compulsory, progressive taxation. The vagaries of voluntary philanthropy should have no role to play in funding fundamental rights and obligations. Nor, we might add, should commerce.

But fund-raising is with us for the time being. If we are to interpret that as voluntary taxation for the local good, then we may need to use the reach of government to ensure that the local good is met equally well in those communities that do not have the same means to raise these extra funds. A scheme must be found to match the voluntary taxation of local community fund-raising with funds derived from compulsory taxation at a regional or municipal level. We should not reduce the voluntary taxation by diverting it but ensure, by matching it with public funds elsewhere, that it will not contribute to or even exacerbate inequities within the system.

That scheme and a new way of considering the role of regional and municipal tax bases will be the focus of a later paper. This fall, we propose first to complete this study of school-based program funding and school-based revenue generation, before taking on the broader public policy discussions for the years to come. Among these later discussions we must re-define the relationship between schools and the communities they serve. Right now that relationship is mostly about fundraising – a relatively easy process for those able to afford the extra support and a desperate struggle for poor communities to mobilize and hang on to the shreds of compensatory support wrung out of a thin line of equity-minded trustees. And this fundraising emphasis is likely to get worse. As long as the Board uses much of its Learning Opportunities Grant to augment general revenues, the Province will feel comfortable reducing its Toronto allocation. That’s because the TDSB seems to be saying we don’t need to help the children of our poor any more than the limited amount we do.

If, in place of the competition for scarce resources and private supplements, we think of schools and communities interacting with each other in the sharing of a genuine education for all, then perhaps enough of the public will feel comfortable paying the taxes that assure an adequate and equitable level of funding without local school fees and fundraising. When the pressure is off wealthier communities to help out their cash-strapped schools, trustees may come to feel that they can spend the public funds that recognize the greater needs of schools in poorer neighbourhoods. Hopefully we will stop thinking of school repairs as investing in children or opting to cash in the investment by leasing out or selling off schools adjudged surplus to narrowly defined needs. Schools and the public property they use should be seen as linked into the daily life of a citizenry dedicated to seeking ways to foster knowledge and wisdom, health and well-being, intercultural exchanges and understanding, ways that are equitable, just and environmentally sustainable.