So when you're talking about things that go beyond money – it gets difficult to believe that there's going to be a deal.

Yeah, look, on curriculum, he's right.

But we listened, right? Last year when they were saying, look, we're not ready for the curriculum, we paused it, we listened to teachers.

The attendance and participation changes that we made this year are a direct reflection of what we heard from high school teachers, an absolute direct reflection.

There are so many teachers who, I can't tell you, educators who have come to me and said, what you are doing in the school boards is absolutely the right thing to have done by refocusing education away from trustees and putting it more focused on students, parents, and teachers is the right thing to do.

So I'm optimistic on class sizes.

I know that's going to be an issue that they're going to bring to the table.

What's your tolerance?

The teachers are paying $0.33.

Yeah, and you'll find that on the over 200 products, you'd be hard-pressed to find a lower price, frankly.

And I just wanted to spell one rumor or myth out there.

This is for teachers to buy supplies over and above the supplies that the principals also have the responsibility to supply to their students.

It's not like they're supplying their own classroom with $750.

On average... principals are getting for a 500 person school about $35,000 to supply pencils, paper, notebooks.

So it's still the principal's responsibility to supply each classroom.

But that said, what's your feeling that you're getting from most teachers?

I mean, really, what are you saying to parents then?

Well, look, the question was asked to me, do I think attendance is important and being in class is important? And I would hope that any minister of education would say, yes, kids should be in school.

They should be learning and they should be participating.

And my position on that hasn't changed.

Having said that, I do understand that there is more to education than just being in the classroom.

And, you know, I was listening this morning, as I said, when John and the former parents saying, oh, what about kids? kids on music or debates.

That is, those are all exempt.

As you know, this is one of my big issues, teacher attendance generally, but specifically in those cases where the teachers are out doing a great job, we don't seem to have supplies to back them up.

$60 million is, is a really a big investment in that new Edwin platform, and, uh, you know, for parents and educators and all of us taxpayers listening right now, what, what does this software do to justify that, that price tag?

Yeah, it is a, it, it, it helps teachers deliver the, the curriculum.

Uh, one of the things that we kept hearing, uh, from a lot of teachers as I was crisscrossing the province is that, you know, great minister, you...

Ministry of Education has given this curriculum, but the resources to deliver it and the lesson plans, very, very thin.

So they have to spend a ton of time, teachers, uh, filling in the blanks.

And so a lot of them kept showing me this program and said, "Well, can you look at this? We've been using this." A lot of teachers were buying it on their own and using, uh, and using the program called Edwin, and the more we looked at it, uh, the more we, we liked it, and we just thought, okay, whether it's Edwin or another platform, perhaps we should be able to provide teachers province-wide access to a, a platform like Edwin.

Went through an RFP, and it was the one that was ultimately, uh, selected.

Why do you think that that is going to be helpful for teachers, um, you know, a- and the school system?

What do you think is wrong?

I think you've touched on a lot of things.

I hear from a lot of parents, not just you, from a lot of parents, they certainly have concerns with absenteeism and their kids having a different teacher.

So I hear that constantly.

I hear from educators constantly.

that the lack of consequences for behavior is something that causes them a great deal of challenge.

And the fact that they don't believe that the ministry and their board have their back if they are to do so.

And I don't feel like they're accountable to anybody.

Couldn't we start combining those into one?

Yeah, I've heard that a lot, but it's going to sound strange, but I actually like the competition that exists between the two boards, to be honest with you.

I think it's an important part.

Setting aside the constitutional issues that revolve around eliminating the separate school system in Ontario.

Could it be done? Yes, you'd have to bring in a constitutional amendment.

But it's just it would be such a distraction in the system, especially at a time when we're going to teach negotiations.

And I've never been in favor of collapsing negotiations.

What is your response to that?

So what was the problem you were trying to solve with that?

Well, first and foremost, I mean, look, some of these boards, their budgets rival those of provinces, right? So they are a massive, massive entity.

And we want to professionalize both the bargaining and and the management of boards.

So bringing a CEO in who has the business background, who has management, who can run large organizations.

School boards are delivering on multimillion-dollar capital projects.

They've got huge staffs, and you need somebody who can manage not only a budget but deliver on the big things.

So we're going to have a CEO who's going to be responsible for that, the CEO who will bring forward the budget, of the board, provide it to the trustees, and the trustees can look at that, make some comments.

And I want to get your sense of what you're hoping they get out of this meeting.

Tell us what you want Ontario families to know.

Yeah, look, well, as we, you know, we took a deeper dive into this year's EQAO results and not satisfied with what we're seeing.

The improvements have been very slow and in a lot of boards we've seen the scores really fall back and the overriding takeaway was that 50% of our grade 6 and grade 9 students aren't meeting the provincial requirements when it comes to math.

So we've announced today that we're going to have a wholesale review of the EQAO.

Not only on the test, but are we providing the appropriate resources for teachers? What can we do better to get those scores up? Does the test match? Yeah.

what kids are learning.

We just got to get to the bottom of this because I think parents want to have comfort to know that their kids are getting the best they possibly can.

If I have to pick between having my emails replied to or having my kids in an environment where their needs are tended to, and it seems like it's an either-or situation, I'm picking my emails not getting replied to.

And I'm just wondering, how do you defend yourself and the government against allegations that this bill is meant to distract from what trustees and advocates are calling a crisis in education due to underfunding? That's one of the criticisms that we've heard this morning.

Yeah, look, I don't think your listeners will care if I say that we have the the highest level of funding in the province's history.

What I'm looking at is what are the results that we're getting out of the education system? Are the students and the standardized testing showing that the over $43 billion of investment are giving us the absolute best students that we can have? And when I talk to teachers, they say, no, we need more resources in the classroom.

We need less distractions in the classroom.

And that's what Bill 33, I think, allows us to do.

Not I think, I know allows us to do.

Look, you referenced some of the things in your own board.

I don't want somebody in Toronto telling me what's best for my kids here in Windsor-Essex.

Who do these people think they are? And who do they think they're working with when the education minister sends somebody in to investigate on behalf of the taxpayer and to the benefit of students and parents? And these guys are obfuscating and not handing over documents? Yeah.

Yeah, and then, of course, obviously, that raises even more alarm bells.

And then as you get into the investigation, you really then start to uncover just what's going on at this board, the absolute inability of the board itself, the trustees who neither want to do their job or care about what their job is.

As the investigator found, they're sowing dissent within their communities because they have personal agendas that run counter to the board's agenda.

their board responsibilities.

You have a director of education who's using his corporate card for family members, and there is no accountability on this whatsoever.

This is a board, I'll just say this, this is a director of education who decided to move his office out of the board offices a couple kilometers away into a school that had been closed and surplused I think seven or eight years earlier.

That's crazy.