Toronto Catholic District School Board

As of 2023, the trustee boundaries are aligned with the municipal wards, which was realigned to match with the federal and provincial ward boundaries.

Italics indicate the trustee remains active.[15]

• Averell Robinson, Q.C. - 1953–1954; Original chair of the MSSB
• Rev. Msgr. Hugh Callaghan, D.P. - 1954–1955
• Gerard Godin - 1956–1957
• Georges B. Heenan - 1958–1959
• Michael J. Duggan - 1960–1962
• Edward J. Brisbois - 1963–1965
• Dr. John J. Andrachuk - 1966–1967
• Rev. Msgr. Percy H. Johnson, P.H. 1968–1969; School named after him.
• J.A. Fullerton - 1970–1971
• J.A. Marrese - 1972–1974
• Joseph Grittani - 1975–1976
• Rev. E.F. Boehler - 1977–1978
• Bruno M. Suppa - 1979–1980
• Paul J. Duggan - 1981–1982
• Edward T. McMahon - 1983–1984; 1996–1997
• Rev. E.F. Boehler - 1984–1985
• Rev. C. Matthews, S.J. - 1985–1986
• Caroline M. DiGiovanni - 1986–1988
• Michael Lofranco - 1988–1989
• Donald E. Clune - 1989–1992
• Elvira DeMonte - 1992–1994
• Paul B.R. Fernandes - 1994–1996
• Joseph Martino - 1997–1999 - Last chair as MSSB and first chair of the reorganized TCDSB.
• Rose Andrachuk - 1999–2000
• Mike Del Grande - 2000–2001 - Later became city councilor; 2014–2015
• Joseph Carnevale - 2001–2003;
• Oliver Carroll - 2003–2007 - Ousted in early 2009 for conflict of interest charges.[16] Now serves as a teacher for the Toronto District School Board since 2010 and teaches at Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies from 2012 onwards.[17][18]
• Catherine LeBlanc-Miller - 2008–2009
• Angela Kennedy - 2009–2010 - later removed by the judge and was later re-elected; 2015–2016
• Ann Andrachuk - 2010-2013
• Jo-Ann Davis - 2013–2014
• Barbara Poplawski - 2017–present

The current director of education is Dr. Brendan Browne, who was appointed in 2020. Prior to his appointment, Browne served as the central superintendent for the Toronto District School Board covering schools in most of the former North York and Scarborough.

• B. E. Nelligan - 1965–1983
• Berchman Kipp - 1983–1989
• Tony Barone - 1989–1996
• Norm Forma - 1996–1997
• Johanne Stewart - 1997–2001
• Tom Donavan - 2001–2005
• Noel Martin (Acting) - 2005
• Kevin Kobus - 2005–2007
• Les Nemes - 2007–2009[19]
• Ann Perron - 2009–2011[20]
• Bruce Rodrigues - 2011–2013 (now CEO at EQAO)
• Angela Gauthier - 2013-2017 (served as Interim Director in 2011)
• Rory McGuckin - 2017-2020

While Catholic high schools are funded by the provincial government, making them open to any students who wish to attend, elementary schools do not have to enrol non-Catholic students. Many argue that the practice of fully funding separate schools exclusively for the Catholic faith is discriminatory to other religions (the United Nations has twice chastised the province for this policy). Supporters of the current Catholic education system point out that it has existed, in one form or another, since Confederation, and that the Constitution Act, 1867 enshrines the right to government-funded religious education to all Catholics. The opposition, however, argues that this is an appeal to tradition, and point to other provinces in Canada which amended the constitution to abolish Catholic school funding. It is up to the school principal whether or not non-Catholics are enrolled.

Recently, the issue of government funding for religious schools has become a major political issue (see 2007 Ontario general election), with PC Party Leader John Tory supporting an extension of funding to all religious schools, Dalton McGuinty's Liberals and Howard Hampton's NDP supporting the status quo, and Frank de Jong's Greens alone calling for elimination of public funding for all religious schools (including Catholic Schools).

The first strikes occurred on April 5–11, 1986 when 6,000 teachers of the Metro Separate School Board went on strike with over 100,000 students affected.[24][25]

From August 2002, the Toronto Catholic elementary teachers were without a contract and imposed work to rule beginning February 2003. With stalled negotiations, the TCDSB officially locked out the teachers on May 16, 2003, and the strike lasted 12 days which left 69,000 students affected.[26] The lockout ended when the Ontario government enacted back-to-work legislation on June 3, 2003.[27]

Conflict arose once again when the TCDSB elementary teachers imposed work to rule once more in 2016.[28]

Again in 2021, during the middle of a pandemic, teachers imposed work to rule, leaving report cards blank and ordering their members to not help in distribution of their students personal belongs in June 2021, without resolution in sight as of August 2021.[29]

The board was embroiled in controversy in May 2008 when a report commissioned by the provincial government uncovered spending abuses by certain trustees, including charges for meals, promotional materials, and prohibited benefits.[30][31] Provincial supervisor Norbert Hartmann was appointed to oversee administration of the board as a result.[32]

During a school trip organized by Holy Spirit Catholic School's eighth-grade students, vice-principal Stephen Patel threw a shoe at 14-year-old student Ian Goulbourne, hitting him in the forehead while on an excursion in Montreal on the school bus on April 24, 2013.[33] Goulborune was taken to the Montreal Children's Hospital to be treated and Patel was sent home the next day on the Via Rail train on paid leave by the TCDSB while it investigated such incident.[34]

A few weeks later, Ferdinando Marrello, a teacher at Monsignor Fraser College was charged with allegations of assaulting a female student who was grabbed by the throat and punched in the face.[35]

In August 2018, Gerry McGilly, 47-year-old former English teacher at Bishop Allen Academy was sentenced to 2–3 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to luring, making child pornography and sexual exploitation of his students, including three 17-year-old victims, dated between 2014 and 2017.[36][37]

On May 1, 2019, Toronto Police formally charged 35-year-old Justin Iozzo, teacher of Father John Redmond Catholic Secondary School of one count of sexual assault and one count of sexual interference that occurred in December 2016 when a student was assaulted on school property. Iozzo had been employed by the Board since 2012 and started his teaching career at Stella Maris and St. John the Evangelist Catholic Schools.[38] However, thirteen days later, Toronto Police arrested 36-year-old Brian Ross, a teacher and coach at Senator O'Connor College School, who is facing charges of sexual assault stemming from a string of incidents during the 2011–12 academic year including a 16-year-old female student being assaulted during his 10-year tenure at Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School and another in March 2017.[39]

The TCDSB has a number of issues with the LGBT communities and the Roman Catholic education in Toronto.

In May 2013, two trustees, Gary Tanuan and John Del Grande, the son of Mike Del Grande, passed a motion to eliminate Gay-straight alliances in all TCDSB schools. The motion stated that the "Toronto Catholic District School Board schools shall have no Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs or similar." Tanuan's motion stemmed from a report for all anti-bullying clubs to adhere to the "Respecting Difference" report issued by the Ontario Catholic School Trustees' Association in January 2012. This report offered guidelines for Catholic schools that included calling groups like GSAs "Respecting Differences" clubs and avoiding discussions of sexual attraction, political activism and gender identity.[40]

However, in November 2020, the TCDSB imposed sanctions against Mike Del Grande over the LGBT2Q+ comments during the November 7, 2019 meeting for comparing homosexuality to bestiality, pedophilia and cannibalism. Del Grande violated the code of conduct for trustees even though he was acting within his role as a trustee to debate the motion.[41]

On January 8, 2021, the TCDSB removed the Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line, a phone peer support line for youth, from their online mental health resource list for students. The removal of YouthLine coincided the same time as when Joe Volpe ran an opinion piece in Corriere Canadese purporting that YouthLine is inappropriate.[42] YouthLine refuted Volpe's article, calling it "homophobic, transphobic, and racist." YouthLine reaffirmed that their anonymous services provide queer, transgender and questioning youth much needed information and resources.[43] Pride Toronto called TCDSB's decision "another example of systemic homophobia and transphobia that continues to run deep within the publicly-funded school board."[44] In May 2022, Youthline and the other defendants won their case in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, and all of Volpe's charges against them were dropped.[45]

On May 6, 2021, the TCDSB voted to recognize June as Pride Month and the raising of the LGBT rainbow flag in all schools and board offices for the first time since the board's inception in 1953. The move comes after Halton Catholic District School Board rejected the vote on raising the gay flag while the Waterloo Catholic District School Board approved the raising of the rainbow flag a month prior.[46]