New “Equity” Initiative at the TDSB Amounts to a Tax on Fundraising

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By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

An upcoming vote at the Toronto District School Board will determine whether schools whose parents raise funds for extra-curriculars will be forced to share the money with schools who don’t. The proposed policy change is based on a parent survey, in which 30% of the respondents favoured the forced sharing of these funds. This is par for the course for the TDSB, who often survey students and parents and then ignore the results. A few years ago, the school police officer liaison program was cancelled because, in a survey, 10% of the students said seeing officers in the schools made them feel “less safe”.

The justification given by those who support the new policy, which would mandate that an as of yet undetermined percentage of funds raised would have to be transferred to a central account and dispersed to other schools, is that it promotes “equity”. These days, that word is a big red flag. It has come to mean equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities. Is it fair that some parents work hard to fund-raise while others sit back and collect handouts?

The idea of forcing parents who spend their personal time, energy, and money to make their kids’ schools a better place to hand over a chunk of the money they raise to other schools where the parents don’t do that has, unsurprisingly, proved controversial.

Supporters of the scheme say that schools in lower-income neighborhoods don’t raise as much (if any) money as those in wealthier neighbourhoods resulting in funding inequities, but the TDSB already takes multiple measures to allocate more funds to the schools in less affluent neighbourhoods. In addition, while provincial base funding is equal and based on the enrollment numbers, there is also Provincial funding directed to special needs students to ensure that schools with a higher percentage of such students can provide more of the kinds of services these kids need. In short, the system is already “equitable” in many ways.

Those opposed to the plan point out, among other things, that it will discourage parents from doing school fundraising and instead lead them to focus their time, energy, and money on providing private enrichment opportunities for their kids outside of school, leaving the schools sterile places of academic learning and little else. Poor kids would obviously be the big losers in this scenario. Then there is the obvious fact that wealthier people pay far more taxes in general, and thus are the ones disproportionally paying for the education of all children. This is something that most people in Canada accept, understanding that a good education for all youth is key to Canada’s future success as a country. But reaching into their pockets and grabbing fundraised money is definitely crossing a line.

Sure, schools can always use more funding, and it cannot be denied that schools with access to more funds can provide opportunities and experiences than those who do not have access to such funding. But, providing absolute equity for all students at all schools, regardless of student family and personal circumstances, is obviously impossible. How far we go in pursuit of this unattainable utopian objective is where the core of this debate lies. It is not an “either/or” question.

A fair and just school system should provide equality of opportunity for essential learning and some agreed upon base level of extracurricular activities (clubs, arts, and sports etc.). But if parents in a wealthy neighbourhood want to fund-raise for fancy frills over and above that, that should be their prerogative. Poorer parents may be envious that their kids do not have access to these extras, just as they may covet the nicer houses, cars, vacations, etc. that wealthier people enjoy.

For their part, kids ingest vast amounts of TV and internet content and are keenly aware that being wealthy is a major advantage in life. What is key is that poor kids feel they have the opportunity to become wealthier than their poor parents through education, hard work, and making wise personal choices in their lives. It is our duty to ensure this is the case, not present kids with a long list of frills someone else paid for. If poor students are lacking in the essentials for learning- be they adequate housing, nutrition, emotional support, clothing, or school supplies etc. then that needs to be addressed through Ontario’s taxation and social welfare systems, not by forcing parents to hand over their school fundraising dollars.

Nevertheless, many wealthier parents are okay with the TDSBs fund-sharing plan, likely for the same reason they support “equity” in general. They have been made to feel guilty about their better-than-average circumstances and are looking for a way to extirpate that guilt. This is a scourge in modern Western societies, because it is easy to for anyone who plays on this misguided empathy to convince them to hand over their money, and too often the people who pocket that money do little or nothing to help anyone but themselves.

In this particular case, the board will be spending a great deal of money policing the system, starting with the $150K salary for an auditor and there will surely be many more administrative costs. That would pay for a lot of chess sets and badminton racquets.

If guilt-ridden wealthy people want to give their money away to whomever, that is their business! But forcing people to give to charities is wrong.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Activists push TDSB to Change School Names

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