Closing the Doors on Opportunity: How mandating a balanced budget puts the Toronto District School Board’s most vulnerable learners at risk

On April 25, 2025, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) presented a 48-page report to its Finance, Budget & Enrolment Committee, spelling out the cuts required to satisfy the province’s demand for a balanced budget in the 2025-2026 school year.

The fix? Deep cuts to the programs that keep school equitable for all students.

The school board is projecting a $58 million deficit for 2025-26 and in search of savings, trustees will debate a package of cuts that reads like a blueprint for widening Toronto’s opportunity gap. These cuts will include:

• Pool & swim-program overhaul including the closure of some pools and the elimination of 86 aquatic instructor positions

• Eliminate 74 Itinerant Music Instructors

• Shift Chrome books program to begin in grade 7 instead of grade 5

• Outdoor-education programs

These are the programs that level the playing field for the 239,000 students TDSB serves.

Who bears the brunt of these cuts?

Toronto is already the child-poverty capital of Canada. In 2022, 25.3 % of the city’s children, a total of 117,890 young people, lived in poverty (Campaign 2000, Nov 2024). In addition, provincial funding for students in the Toronto District School Board now falls roughly $776 per pupil short when adjusted for inflation (OPSBA, 2024).

Part of the problem is that some of this shortfall is connected to essentials such as fair educator compensation, rising statutory‑benefit costs, and inflationary pressures. In this context, removing no-fee swim lessons, instrumental music, outdoor-ed stays or early technology access hits precisely the families who need these programs the most.

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  A Thrive facilitator demonstrates a printmaking technique to a group of attentive students gathered around a table filled with art supplies.

  
  

Why this matters

At Thrive, we bring arts-based leadership programs into priority-neighbourhood schools supported by our donors, foundation partners, and corporate giving. Day after day our facilitators see how an instrument, a canvas, or a choreographed challenge can spark confidence in students who don’t thrive in a traditional classroom. When those gateways close, the futures they unlock close with them.

The real cost of “balancing” the budget

In a perfect world, organizations like Thrive wouldn’t have to exist. Every student would have free of cost access to engaging, inspiring enrichment at their neighbourhood school. But this can’t happen with one-off cuts and band-aid fixes. Making cuts to vital programs while the structural deficit looms is a sledgehammer solution to a problem that demands careful, long-term repair.

Mandating boards to balancing their books by unbalancing student lives isn’t fiscal prudence—it’s social disinvestment that we will feel for decades to come. If we’re serious about building a strong, future-proof economy, we have to start by giving every student the tools to thrive.