Sizer sealed my commitment to preserving young people's right to the best K-12 publicly funded education.
—and the answer is a bit more complicated than my almost half-decade fighting corruption in student unions. As a virtue ethicist who prefers not to wear the label on my sleeve—if I can help it—I like to believe that I am an honest guy; my track record on the internet probably predicts my carelessness for whether this blog post could affect my future job prospects as a civil servant. I might as well get justitia plus a nobis postulat tattooed on my back—but, as the maxim goes, justice demands more from us.
I have almost no time to write here (as of these final editorial reviews, I just finished two math courses with Western and am on track to acquire the senior math additional qualification), but caught up in the zeal of the hiring season, I could not stop thinking about the situation in my Board. I am writing this in part to consolidate and to organize my frustrations.
If you've been following the news, the Thames Valley District School Board isn't doing particularly well. Moreover, after two consecutive years of over-projected enrollment and the subsequent surplusing of numerous contract teachers, the fourth round of job postings visible for occasional teachers (hereafter, "OTs") for the 2025-26 academic year included a handful of partial technology education lines. (My one administrator wasn't joking when they remarked to me that the only new tech teachers in our Board are those returning from retirement.)
Bootstraps firmly distended, I have normalized working 7 days per week across public and private because I don't perceive my job as a job; it's a lifestyle. However, recent events have sent me down a rabbit hole of reflection regarding the exhaustive implications of enduring as a TVDSB secondary OT.
My free-fall down the rabbit hole began when I recently visited my old associate teacher who hosted both of my practica and who is now a principal in the TVDSB. They informed me that, to my ignorance, my private school teaching experience—all of it, potentially even my TA work for OISE—can count towards teaching experience on the collectively bargained pay grid for all permanent and temporary contract teachers (including long-term occasional teachers, hereafter "LTOs"). This insight, and the acknowledgement from one of my friends that over-qualified people tend to be avoided in hiring in most industries, had me revisiting all of my interviews and interactions with administration over the past year.
To understand the depth of my dismay, I need to briefly review my work experience. In addition to a year and a half of full-time teaching at a British Columbian certified offshore school, I have also taught at least one course part-time for my private school every year since I was hired back in 2015 (excepting an 8-month hiatus to go full-time as Internal Commissioner for the UTGSU). I usually teach 2-3 condensed courses in the summer. Now, this is all in addition to the 6 courses that I TA'd for my former supervisor under Graduate Assistantships. The latter is questionable as admissible teaching experience, but even if they included only my time serving my private schools hour for hour from paystubs, I probably have about 5 years of teaching experience /before/ the last year and half of solid supply teaching (I think I took ~10 days off from supplying total this past year due to illness or exams).
So, here's the problem. If my prospective administrators' concerns begin with the existential threats to their school, including first-and-foremost financial solvency, then my competency and efficacy as a teacher—including familiarity with the respective school's students, my consistency, and even my performance in interviews—are almost immaterial. My content fluency (or capacity to regain it under pressure) to teach my qualified subjects passably is guaranteed by the OCT. Empathizing with the average administrator trying to balance a budget in a cash-strapped Board running a deficit with dubious upper leadership—from their perspectives, I am an overpriced, at least more than passable, temporary History, Social Studies, /or/ English teacher (or Math teacher by Nov. 2025). Anyone among the interviewees who can demonstrate that they can teach the subjects posted in the job more than passably for substantially cheaper will get hired over me every single time. (Since LTO teachers are paid according to the same grid as permanent contract teachers, the salary discrepancies for LTOs are substantial; it'd be the difference between hiring a temporary contract teacher who can do the job passably according to Ministry and OCT standards for about 50-60k per annum versus hiring to preserve at least the status quo for the school for about 80-90k per annum; if you were an administrator trying to balance a budget, who would you hire? The Union-negotiated rules give administrators this discretion.[And it's worth noting that my Union would probably not appreciate my zeal to work for less than 40k]).
Therefore, when hiring LTOs in many public boards in Ontario, it's not a question of who's the best person for the job, per se. It's not even a question of who's the best fit for the school and its students. Rather, it's a question of which interviewed candidate appears to offer the school the best deal. A candidate's qualifications and seniority will get them the interview since the TVDSB manages the shortlists for prospective interview candidates under collective bargaining. But, if even one other interviewee can promise to do the same job passably for less cost, they'll get the job over the more experienced candidate almost every single time, especially if the principal has ultimate power over decision-making since they're responsible for the execution of the school's district allocation within the Board's budget. Meaning that a candidate's teaching qualifications (as in additional teachable subjects) can count /against/ their employment for, say, a one-line LTO, given how the grid determines pay based on additional qualifications. So, as a consequence, for long-term occasional positions, it's in the best interests of administrations to hire the least (over-)qualified candidate with the least teaching experience.
I am not going to lie on my resume or during the interview about my experience or capacity as an educator. Moreover, as someone who has worked in private systems for over 10 years, I am relatively confident in asserting that this is not the system that renders generalist private schools in Ontario redundant. My colleagues in private systems have all the public boards' dis-incentives and personal & professional incentives to make privatized schooling as effective as possible. When I alluded to one of my managers that we seemed to be building an empire during COVID, they responded, "well, what do you /think/ we're doing?"
Likewise, if I committed to the thought experiment of finding additional ways for the secular public boards to dis-incentivize the best teachers in private education from attempting to transition into public, I would be hard-pressed to make it less attractive to most of these subject specialists who generally have much freer reign and comfort to do whatever they believe best supports their students. I began making the transition from private to public myself for moral reasons; it was another substantial pay-cut to become a full-time supply teacher rather than going full mercenary for my private school that I was willing to make for the sake of this blog post's video caption text: the public system must succeed to preserve the best K-12 education as a human right.
The problem I've referenced is not just that the Boards prioritize solvency and the status quo over student growth. Guess how my private school originally interviewed me—how they interview all new hires. —my administrators watched me teach. I know this may sound absolutely groundbreakingly revolutionary, observing teachers in order to judge the quality and efficacy of their teaching as part the hiring process to find the best person for the job (and for their students), but my Board doesn't do this. Turns out most of the Boards in the province don't do this. Which, yeah, may seem preposterous to an outsider. Granted, the Ontario Education Act requires that LTOs participate in the Teacher Performance Appraisal process, but only after 97 days into an LTO. One can try to chalk this up to the resources needed to appraise new permanent and temporary contract teachers, but the system allows teachers to be hired to teach and to work with students for up to 97 days with negligible legally required oversight by administration. Consider the implications of the answer to the question "when is an administrator actually legally required to observe a teacher teaching in Ontario?"
The history here is complicated, but my research and conversations with colleagues suggest that the limited hiring process and oversight can be mostly attributed to the persistent animosity between the unions representing administrators and the unions representing teachers—which, by the way, is also an exceptional power dynamic relatively unique to Ontario. It's an adversarial system with students often caught in the cross-fire. Here, it's worth reiterating that the title "principal" comes from the original expression "principal teacher," akin to headmasters in 19th century British schools: a first-amongst equals in a teaching staff. As though, administrators and teaching staff are on the same team.
I have nothing against "putting my time in" when it comes to any pursuit. I've joked publicly that I'm probably supply teaching straight into a principal qualification course. But, as someone who's studied education academically for over 10 years full-time, I can't help but inquire whether this situation is healthy for our students and their families. Catholic Boards are continually sponging secular public boards' students and teachers in my home city, in a positive feedback-loop since funding is tied to full-time equivalent enrollment. The secular public schools in my Board are generally not the ones that need enrollment caps. Likewise, most of my OT colleagues are either considering, have been recently hired by, or are already also working for the London District Catholic School Board. Parents are clearly paying attention. So should we.
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Ted Sizer arguably had one goal: student growth, whatever the cost. The practices he promoted in Horace's Compromise eventually became the basis of 600 schools. In addition to mastery- and project-based learning, he recognized the importance of team teaching. Yet, more than one of my colleagues has indicated, rather sternly, that the administrators "are not our friends." This assumption betrays a fundamental problem if we're genuinely committed to the educations of our students, particularly in community-funded schools sustained as civil service. In schools, we will never be as effective as adversaries as we could be as cooperative allies, and I'm relatively certain that I don't need to conduct multiple studies and write several dissertations to confirm that proposition beyond a reasonable doubt—since we're human beings.
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