Harris-era hangovers : Toronto School Trustees' inherited funding shortfall

The most obvious symptoms of those pressures are the annual gaps that appear between the funding allocated to the tdsb by the provincial govern- ment and the funding it needs to maintain activities and programming from one year to the next. [...] That’s the legacy of the Harris-era Hangovers 9 Harris government years: school boards engaging in an annual process to reduce the persistent gap between the level of funding provided by the provincial government and the funding required to maintain programming. [...] Although every comprehensive review ever conducted of education funding in On- tario has recommended an allocation of between 5% and 10% of the education budget to support local priorities not addressed by the general funding formula, in 2006 the Ontario government stripped the local priorities funding that had been added to the formula in the Harris era. [...] From the perspective of the provincial government, this is part of the genius of the funding system for elementary and secondary education. [...] Remarkably, it was revealed by the government in court proceed- ings in 1998 that the $5.20 amount was calculated as the median of the per square costs paid by the 122 school boards in existence before the funding formula was introduced.