ANALYSIS: Cash-strapped school board officials’ stadium stay hurts public trust

A three-day stay at the Toronto Blue Jays’ stadium hotel by senior executives with a London-area school board facing a $7.6-million budget shortfall will erode the organization’s trust with parents and the community, a political scientist says.

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As first reported by The Free Press18 senior administrators with the Thames Valley District school board stayed from Aug. 19-21 at the former SkyDome hotel, where rooms can cost as much as $1,200 per night. The Jays were playing every night.

Decisions like this – especially against the backdrop of a budget crunch that’s resulted in job and classroom-related cuts – underscores the need for public-sector employees “to be very careful about optics,” said Jacquetta Newman, who teaches at Western University‘s King’s University College.

“If you find it difficult to trust your administrators the tendency is to disengage – people get disillusioned,” she said. “It highlights that they are not really necessarily connected with the public and the real problems.”

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Added Newman: “My personal position is something like this makes me really angry – to see senior administrators use money in a way that seems lavish and over the top. It makes people angry.”

Now known as the Marriott City Center Hotel and located inside the baseball stadium, rooms cost $374 to $1,199 a night, according to hotel staff. The rooms used by administrators had views of the playing field, and the Blue Jays were home on all three dates, against Cincinnati.

Thames Valley officials have refused to detail the exact cost of the retreat, organized to plan for the school year ahead.

The board’s education director, Mark Fisher, declined an interview with The Free Press on Wednesday. Trustee Beth Mai – who chairs the school board, which was not involved in the Toronto trek – didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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But a school board spokesperson said out-of-town retreats like this one are “likely an activity that will not continue moving forward.”

The London District Catholic school board also had a recent planning meeting in St. Catharines for 20 people with accommodations for one night, spokesperson Mark Adkinson said on Wednesday, but he was unable to say how much it cost. The Catholic board has a $1.3 million deficit.

Andrea Lawlor is a McMaster University political science professor. She said all businesses and organizations “use funds for professional development and some of that professional development happens off-site,” meaning events like this are common, as Fisher has argued.

But a budget crunch changes the calculation, she said. “When the organization is putting forward a goal of austerity or budgetary restraint, things that appear inconsistent with those goals are going to be judged critically.”

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Mary Henry is president of CUPE Local 4222, which represents early childhood educators, secretaries and educational assistants in the Thames Valley board. She said it’s “great” if board executives nix future out-of-town retreats.

“But it doesn’t justify the action that it has already taken and the expense that it has cost the board,” Henry said.

She said she was also upset to learn this week that elementary principals were in line for raises of as much as $10,000 this year, the same rate as high school principals. “It’s very disappointing because we are in a deficit. . . . It’s very upsetting.”

Earlier this year it was revealed that several top brass at the Thames Valley board were paid 12- to 33-per-cent more in 2023 compared to the year before. Fisher’s total income rose to $326,000 in 2023 from $283,000 in 2022, according to Ontario’s list of public-sector workers making $100,000 or more.

Some senior staff at the London Catholic board also got raises of more than 10 per cent, and, in some cases, as much as 30 per cent.

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