The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) says the Ford government spread false information about it cancelling a $5 million cellphone contract only after it was contacted by the media.
The cellphone contract plan had been in place to purchase iPhones for the administration team.
Ontario Progressive Conservative Education Minister Lisa Thompson told The Toronto Star that “to have a school board choose to buy top-of-the-line iPhones for their administration team is absolutely unacceptable in today’s fiscal reality.”
Robin Pilkey, the TDSB chair, said that the board was in early stages of the plan, but cancelled it a day before the Toronto Sun contacted the board. She said the plan was cancelled as part of the board’s budget-balancing efforts.
“It is also pretty clear that the government was wrong when it insinuated that the TDSB only cancelled a cellphone [request for proposals] once it was asked about it,” Pilkey told The Toronto Star.
Thompson said the Ford government wants to restore public confidence in the school board’s spending practices, and will ask the TDSB to cancel any spending plans that would take money away from classrooms.
NDP Member of Provincial Parliament Marit Stiles, a former TDSB trustee and the education critic, told The Toronto Star in an email that “the minister actually needs to be corrected on that item, because in fact she’s doing a great disservice to the Toronto District School Board. She knows perfectly well that did not happen and it is not happening.”
Image credit: YouTube (Screenshot)
Source: The Toronto Star
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