TORONTO – The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is facing a multi-million dollar structural deficit for the fiscal year of 2013-14 attributed to operational shortcomings which will continue to grow unless measures are quickly taken, according to a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The study, to be presented to the director of education of the TDSB, scrutinized seven areas of concern regarding its operations that represents 22 per cent of the board’s overall budget. The other 78 per cent of the budget is dedicated to teaching, which was not examined in the report.
“The current staff forecast of $30 million for Fiscal Year 2013-14 makes assumptions regarding the effectiveness of planned reductions, the size of unplanned risk and cost pressures,” the report stated. “PwC has concerns over these assumptions and believe that the FY 13-14 deficit may be twice the current staff forecast.”
The report points to a list of reasons why the TDSB is bleeding cash including lack of checks and balances in senior level leadership, maverick spending in procurement processes, and poor streamlining in facilities services.
“We’re going to address the issues and challenges head on as we’ve been doing and move forward and ensure we’re as efficient and optimizing our resources the best we can to support students and staff in our communities,” said TDSB director of education Chris Spence following a private meeting with board trustees on Thursday night.
When it comes to human resources, PwC indicates the board is losing a substantial amount of money from staff taking too many paid sick days.
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“In FY11/12, the TDSB lost an average of 13 paid days per employee, or the equivalent total of 351,552 paid days in aggregate,” the report explained. “Teacher absences, whether paid or unpaid, have a great impact on students. The TDSB’s supply teacher expenditure is estimated to be close to $55M for FY12-13.”
The report further states the TDSB has a capital deficit of approximately $50 million with a number of high profile (re)development projects that began around 10/11 which are now significantly over budget and/or delayed.
“We already working on some parts of the reports, some things we can do immediately and some we have to work on in a certain period of time,” said TDSB Chair Chris Bolton.
In facilities services, “there’s a culture of ‘providing everything to everyone’ and a lack of strategic analysis to determine what facilities services are core versus non-core and which should be in-sourced versus outsourced.”
The report ended by offering recommendations including looking at outsourcing non-core services, strengthening accountabilities and oversight for payroll operations, and using comparable industry construction cost benchmarks for new projects.
“We’re a complex, large diverse school board, when you got 250,000 students, 40,000 employees, operating over 600 sites, it’s a complex challenge we are dealing with and an opportunity to get better and improve the system,” explained Spence.
The TDSB’s 2012-13 budget is approximately $2.7 billion with the board required by law to maintain a balance each year.
You can read the full PwC report below.
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