Ontario education minister blasts TDSB for considering cutting programs [Video]

Ontario’s education minister says the province’s largest school board must make significant cuts to balance its books but has started highlighting areas he won’t allow trustees to touch.

Toronto District School Board is one of several boards in Ontario the Ford government is currently subjecting to intense financial scrutiny, with the threat of a takeover if they can’t make changes.

Trustees at the board were presented with options to consider cutting after the investigation was announced, including closing swimming pools, cutting music programs and delaying access to school computers.

Education Minister Paul Calandra said on Wednesday he was frustrated with those options and continued to threaten further action.

“Their solutions are unsurprising to me — the first thing that they said that they would do would be to fire teachers and close pools,” he said to reporters. “So that’s always going to be the TDSB’s position and, as I said in the …