Toronto Catholic District School Board

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Toronto Catholic District School Board TCDSB
Board office location	80 Sheppard Ave. East, Toronto, Ontario
Communities served	all of the city of Toronto
Number of schools	201: 168 elementary schools, 31 secondary schools and 2 combined (elementary and secondary) schools.^[1]
2006-07 budget (CAD $ millions)	$830 million approx.^[2]
Number of students	87,000
Chair of the Board	Catherine LeBlanc-Miller
Elected Trustees	12
http://www.tcdsb.org/

The Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) is one of three school boards in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of two English boards of education in the Toronto area.

For French language schools see Conseil scolaire de district catholique Centre-Sud.

1 Overview
2 History
3 Trustees
4 Controversies
5 Secondary schools
6 Combined Schools
7 Elementary schools
8 See also
9 References
10 External links

[edit] Overview

The TCDSB has 168 elementary schools, 33 secondary schools and 3 combined (elementary and secondary) schools. It serves the former cities of Scarborough, North York, York, East York, old city of Toronto and Etobicoke.

[edit] History

Formerly the Metropolitan Separate School Board, the TCDSB was formed in 1998 as the school board that administers most of the publicly funded Roman Catholic schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (there is also a French-language Catholic school board).

[edit] Trustees

The TCDSB has 12 wards and 12 trustees and 1 student trustee (who is not entitled to vote). The Chair of the Board, the Vice-Chair and the Honourary Treasurer are elected at the inaugural meeting of the Board, and serve for one year. As of May 2008, Catherine LeBlanc-Miller serves as chair, Ann Andrachuk serves as vice-chair and Barbara Poplawski is honourary treasurer. Trustees are paid $18,500 a year in salary and an additional $18,000 for expenses.

[edit] Controversies

While Catholic high schools are funded by the provincial crown, making them open to any students who wish to attend, elementary schools do not have to enroll non-Catholic students. Many argue that the practice of fully funding separate schools exclusively for the Catholic faith is discriminatory to other religions (i.e.the United Nations has twice chastised the province for this policy). Supporters of the current Catholic education system point out that it has existed, in some form or another, since Confederation, and that the Constitution Act, 1867, enshrines the right to government-funded religious education to all Catholics. The opposition, however, argues that this is an appeal to tradition and point to other provinces in Canada which amended the constitution to abolish Catholic school funding.

Recently, the issue of government funding for religious schools has become a major political issue (see Ontario general election, 2007), with John Tory's PCs supporting an extension of funding to all religious schools, Dalton McGuinty's Liberals and Howard Hampton's NDP supporting the status quo, and Frank de Jong's Greens alone calling for elimination of public funding for all religious schools (including Catholic Schools).

The board were embroiled in controversy in May 2008 when a report commissioned by the provincial government uncovered spending abuses by some trustees, including frequent meals and meals with alcohol charged to the public purse, and thousands spent on promotional materials.^[3]^[4]