Ontario school boards have recently come under heightened public scrutiny regarding their spending on travel and team retreats, and concerns over trustee conduct. Before the recent amendments to the Education Act, school boards were responsible for investigating and determining trustee code of conduct breaches. While these responsibilities now fall under board-appointed integrity commissioners, recent court challenges to board decisions on trustee conduct provide important guidance on issues of fairness, reasonableness, and how to consider a trustee’s Charter rights when making these determinations.
One recent judicial review, Sloat v Grand Erie District School Board, 2024 ONSC 6209, offers a cautionary tale about the importance of protecting procedural rights and ensuring that decision-makers have a full understanding of the facts before rendering their decisions.
While Trustee Sloat was first elected in 2003, the story of this case begins in May 2023. This was when the board of trustees made the first of four separate decisions that found Trustee Sloat in breach of its code of conduct. In the four decisions, which span less than a year, the board of trustees found that Trustee Sloat breached the code of conduct in numerous ways, including by disclosing confidential information when filing a complaint to the Ontario Ombudsman and in a court filing, by having inappropriate communications with school principals, staff and parents, and by attending board meetings as a member of the public.
The cumulative sanctions from the four decisions included bans from attending board meetings for a year and serving on committees for two years. The board's complaint protocol did not allow Trustee Sloat to make verbal submissions or respond to questions during deliberations. Trustee Sloat appealed the decisions internally to the board without success.