GUELPH – Since word got out about the Lambton Kent District School Board using $32,000 from a fund earmarked for Indigenous education to send three staff members to a conference in Hawaii, the provincial government is taking a closer look at school board spending.
Recent big-ticket travel expenses at Ontario boards include a $145,000 trip to Italy (including the price of religious artwork purchased) at the Brantford Haldimand Norfolk Catholic board, and staff retreats that cost between $16,000 and $40,000 at various other boards.
At the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB), two conferences in 2024 cost over $18,000 each.
In November, Premier Doug Ford ordered an Ontario-wide audit of school boards’ discretionary spending.
When the Advertiser inquired about UGDSB spending, officials sent a table that listed each conference that officials attended and the cost of registration, travel and accommodations, as well as a description of each conference.
Overall, during the 2023-24 school year, the UGDSB spent almost $77,000 on conference fees and related accommodation and travel expenses, including trips to Florida and Texas for artificial intelligence (AI)-related conferences.
Executive staff, including the director, executive director, superintendents and managers, attended 11 conferences, and four trustees attended one.
Director Peter Sovran told the Advertiser decisions on who will attend which conferences are made carefully by the executive committee, and the board’s multi-year plan is used as a jumping-off point for those decisions.
From there, Sovran said, “We bring it to the table, we discuss it, and then we determine … who is going to attend.”
He said the “why” behind attending each conference is “really critically important” to the school board.
“I think it’s important, at least for us, that everyone knows when we spend any dollars or take any sort of travel or do any professional learning, it’s really tied to a very specific focus, not just a year-over-year thing.
“People on our team don’t just one-off attend things,” he said. Each decision for an individual is “very tightly aligned to our plan and work that we are focused on doing.
“Every time somebody attends something there is always a clear direction as to why you are going … what you are intending on bringing back and what you will be doing with the actual learning once you bring it back.”
Big-ticket trips
The two most expensive conferences attended by UGDSB officials were a conference for Ontario public supervisors and a summit about artificial intelligence (AI).
The annual Ontario Public Supervisory Officers Association conference in Ottawa cost $6,800 for travel to Ottawa, $6,600 for accommodations (two days and nights) and $5,700 for conference fees, for a total of $19,100.
It was attended by associate director Brent McDonald and superintendents Peggy Blair, Denise Heaslip, Pat Hamilton, Belal Taha, Peirdre Pyke and Wendy Donaldson.
Topics of keynotes and sessions during the conference included student achievement, equity and Indigenous education.
The other pricey conference was a “Deeper Learning Summit” on the topic of AI in Anaheim, Florida.
This conference cost more than $6,000 for travel, almost $10,000 for accommodations (four days and nights) and $2,200 in conference fees, for a total of $18,200.
It was attended by Sovran, Hamilton, communications manager Heather Loney and corporate services manager Amy Villeneuve.
Sovran said the decision to attend this conference was “really a decision to focus on deepening our learning around AI.”
The invite-only conference was attended by five other Ontario boards and a total of 12 Canadian boards.
“We went with a really specific focus,” Sovran said.
He said his own role at that conference was to learn how other boards, including Canadian boards and the Anaheim school board, are pursuing AI in education in kindergarten through Grade 12. The Anaheim school board is a leader in this area, Sovran noted.
Hamilton attended because he is part of the UGDSB’s innovation lab in Orangeville, so his focus was on what the board can learn and do differently around AI in the lab.
Villeneuve attended in order to learn how the Anaheim board put on the conference, “with a view that we are looking at hosting our own Canadian version of the conference with ourselves and some others as potential leads to put that together,” Sovran said.
He said Loney’s focus was on learning about how to communicate about AI in kindergarten through Grade 12 learning, and making connections with colleagues.
UGDSB officials also attended an AI-themed conference in Austin, Texas in 2024.
McDonald and Pyke spent four days and nights in Texas for the conference, which cost the board about $3,100 for travel, $2,100 for accommodations and $3,200 for conference fees, for a total of $8,400.
“When they went to Austin … they had a very specific focus around utilizing AI in people, leadership and culture/human resource services,” Sovran said, which is “one of the places where we are doing our most significant work in utilizing AI right now.”
Thanks to the learning and connections that came from that conference, “now we are in a pilot phase to a number of tools that we are using around AI,” he said.
“We don’t tend to leave the province to attend anything,” Sovran noted, but the board “really packed (conferences) into last year with this theme of AI as we were embarking on it.”
Declined invitations
The AI Deeper Learning Summit is an annual conference, and while the UGDSB was invited to attend again in 2025, officials declined the invitation.
“Not because we don’t appreciate the collaboration, and not because we didn’t have significant learning, but because now we are actually taking that learning and applying it here – so we don’t need to go back.
“We were invited to attend other conferences,” he noted, “And we say no. We’ve said no before and we’ve said no again this year.”
For example, Sovran said he was invited to an executive briefing at a conference in San Diego in 2023, “and I said no.
“Not because I didn’t see the value – it being an executive briefing with various colleagues from across North America. But because it was July and it was San Diego and we had just tabled a budget that had included a very deliberate deficit, where we were investing in more teachers for reading, for math support.
“We really felt that it wasn’t the right time to leave the province, let alone the country,” he said.
“We are very mindful of the fact that it really gives an impression – that you just passed a budget that has a deficit and yet you are jet-setting to San Diego in July. So I deliberately didn’t do that.”
