Policy Overview

Tim's background includes a wealth of experience in policy analysis, effective advocacy, and non-profit governance. He believes strongly in evidence-based policy design and consensus-based decision making. These policies are intended to navigate the public school system, and the people within it, safely and successfully through the intersecting challenges that define the current era. Working together, we can ensure that schools provide safe, effective learning and teaching environments as well as strong and healthy community hubs.

A World-Class Education

Toronto is a world-class city, and our students deserve a world-class education.

Repair backlog and funding.
Buy Canadian
Full support for special education. Canadians are known for our fairness, decency, and keen sense of right and wrong. We must not allow bigotry or violence to take root in our schools.
Model schools. Around the world, democracy is under attack. It is essential that schools give students a firm understanding of not only how democracy works but why it is so important. This includes giving kids a meaningful voice in the democratic process - real say in how their schools operate and how their government interacts with their lives.
Community. Welcoming, inclusive schools can be the cornerstone of their community. We are all in this together; our local schools can provide hubs for charitable efforts, volunteer work, tool libraries, community gardens, and other means to provide for stronger, healthier, more connected communities.

Responsible Tech Policy

The technological landscape is changing very quickly, in ways that make it difficult to predict how these changes will impact society, the economy, and the education system. It is vital that TDSB approach tech policy with student safety and educational attainment top of mind, while retaining the flexibility to adapt as circumstances continue to change and ensuring that parent and student voices and concerns are meaningfully heard.

Therefore, a responsible tech policy must be based on:

Evidence-based decisions. Tech adoption should be driven by factual, evidence-based information, not marketing hype. Adoption of new technology, and guidelines governing its use, must be informed by data and analysis from credible research institutions, trusted NGOs, and official government agencies - not solely from self-interested tech companies.
Focusing on proven methods. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement and hype of new innovations. But student learning is precious; they never get a second chance to be a child, and as we've seen from some past "innovations" such as three cueing, the scars of an educational experiment gone awry can last a lifetime. While recognizing the need to ensure students have an understanding of modern technology, we must remember that learning about new technology does not necessarily require learning with new, unproven consumer products. Students deserve an education with a proven record of results, educators deserve consistent and trustworthy curricula, and parents deserve to know that their children are not being harmed by short-sighted adoption of untested techniques or products.
Meaningful input from parents, students, and educators. Too often, new technologies are presented as "inevitable". Consultation, if it's offered at all, purports to seek input on how to adapt new technologies, rather than if they should be adopted at all. And students are almost never consulted in any meaningful way, even though they are the ones who are most directly affected, and on the longest timeline. Tim is committed to a robust consultation process that meaningfully includes students, parents, and educators in decisions about "AI" and other EdTech.
Safety first. It's not just educational outcomes that are at stake. Technological change poses potential risks to the mental, social, and physical well-being of students. Many current apps are designed explicitly to be addictive. The health impacts of generative "AI" are not yet well understood, but early signs show alarming incidents of "AI psychosis", facilitating suicide attempts, and causing cognitive atrophy. We owe it to our children to take a precautionary approach, holding off on technological integration until risks, harms, and benefits are well understood and an informed cost/benefit analysis can be made. No such analysis of "AI" technology has yet been made at TDSB, and as such we cannot safely impose "AI" on children in schools at this time.
Fierce protection of student privacy and developmental data. Parents deserve to know exactly what developmental data about their children is being captured by the tech products deployed in schools, and to have a meaningful say in whether and how that data is used. The risks have risen drastically: writing assignments that include personal anecdotes could see that information fed into training data for an "AI" model, where it can be accessible to anyone in the world; a single photo of a child uploaded to an insecure or malicious server could become the base of deepfake CSAM. Parents and students must be able to trust that any such information is fully secure, not being commercialized, and is remaining solely in Canadian servers which are covered by Canadian law. Also - and this is often overlooked in debates about tech surveillance - students are children, and deserve to have a childhood that lets them make mistakes and take social risks without constantly being monitored and judged.
Transparency. Students and parents have the fundamental right to know when, where, and how new technologies, particularly invasive technologies such as "AI", are being used to evaluate them, track them, or make decisions about their educational future. Students must also, at all times, retain the right to access and review their own educational records, including materials and assessments that are held by "EdTech" companies. Finally, Trustees and the public must be able to review EdTech contracts, particularly with American tech giants like Google, that are currently being held in secret.
Freedom from advertising and distorted information. Schools are places for learning unbiased facts, critical thinking, creative expression, civic virtue, and essential social skills. Students have a right to expect that deliberately skewed information, such as commercial advertising, biased search results, and secretly weighted LLM outputs, are prohibited, excepting use in an informed educational context (e.g. learning how to assess the credibility of an advertisement).
Human oversight and real accountability. Let's be clear: there is no such thing as artificial intelligence at this time. Machines and algorithms, including those marketed as "AI", can accelerate human decision-making, but cannot replace human judgment. As such, automated systems must never be the final arbiter of high-stakes decisions affecting a student’s academic standing, financial stability, program admission, or any other aspect of educational success and fundamental well-being.

Safe Schools - From Start to Finish

Students and teachers deserve a safe environment that allows them to focus on the work of education - and parents deserve the peace of mind of knowing that their children are not at risk.

Real safety begins with understanding and accurately assessing risk. High-probability, high-damage risks should be mitigated first. Trustees must work with education workers and the provincial government to focus on facing the most pressing and most common safety hazards facing schools:

Extreme heat. With higher metabolic rate and lower cardiac output, children are much more vulnerable to heat than adults are. This goes beyond physical ailments like heat stroke or heat exhaustion; there is extensive evidence that prolonged exposure to high indoor temperatures is linked to cognitive decline, sleep disruption, memory loss, and lower test scores. As the climate crisis continues and our environment grows warmer, extreme heat days are going to become more common. We must act now to safeguard children by working with the province and city to set a maximum indoor temperature in schools, and ensuring that HVAC systems are fully up to date and functional, which has been shown to be highly protective against heat impacts (see this Harvard study for more).
Indoor air quality. It's a fact of life: kids get sick in school constantly, and they bring those diseases home to infect their parents - an economic burden that costs the Canadian economy billions of dollars annually in lost productivity and added healthcare expenses. But... what if kids didn't get sick so often? The reality is that clean indoor air, properly filtered and ventilated, can play a key role in drastically reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Properly filtered air also protects kids from wildfire smoke and other air pollutants, which are increasingly common and can cause serious long-term health impacts as well as impacting learning capacity. The math is clear: ensuring schools have clean indoor air can have a huge return on investment by directly addressing the student absenteeism crisis, improving student educational outcomes, and keeping parents and caregivers healthier. Imagine a world where you and your family are very rarely sick - that world is possible with clean indoor air standards.
Transportation. Traffic fatalities and injuries climbed again in 2025. Parents quite understandably do not feel safe allowing their kids to walk or bike to school, and instead choose to drive them in. This then leads to huge lineups during pickup and dropoff, which is itself a danger, causing more parents to choose to drive, and so the cycle continues. It's time for a comprehensive analysis of school transportation patterns to understand where the immediate gains are, and to inform longer-term planning to improve transportation safety. Crucially, student voices must be part of this conversation - for far too long, decisions about students have been for them, rather than with them.
Bullying and violence. Students and educators alike deserve safe schools. Trustees must work with staff and the province to ensure that evidence-based policies to address the root causes of violence can be pursued and adequately funded, particularly high ROI options like student nutrition programs and extended day programs.
Lack of support. Class sizes that are too large to manage, and slashing of special education supports, have created unsafe learning conditions. Trustees have been kneecapped on addressing this by recent legislation; this is an essential area of advocacy that the new Trustee must seek to challenge the province on.

Modern, Sustainable, and Efficient Schools

Investing in repair and modernization of our schools may look expensive - thanks to years of underfunding, there's over $4 billion in repair backlogs alone. But the evidence is clear: these investments more than pay off in the long run, in increased economic activity, reduced productivity losses, and big savings in energy efficiency.

It's time to take a targeted approach to accelerating the modernization of our built infrastructure:

Resume solar roofing. Previously, a provincial program facilitated solar panel installation on school rooftops. With large footprints and large energy draw, schools are an ideal site for these panels, and schools with panels installed have seen outstanding savings on energy bills. Unfortunately, the program was curtailed in 2018. Solar panels have only gotten cheaper and more efficient in the intervening years. It's time to finish the job with solar panels on the remaining schools, bringing down energy costs and reducing carbon emissions.
Protect TDSB property. Toronto is a big, dynamic city, with land in short supply. It's no surprise that there are efforts to sell off TDSB properties. These efforts, however, are short-sighted. We should instead look to work with local communities to plan ahead, working creatively to repurpose underutilized properties and ensuring that future capacity planning decisions can be made to meet the needs of a growing city.
Invest in modernization and end the repair backlog. This should not be controversial. City and TDSB staff are well-versed in what physical infrastructure is needed to provide a modern, world-class education befitting a city as advanced as Toronto. We must work quickly to close the repair backlog and proactively assess high ROI investments in modernization efforts, including increased energy efficiency and insulation to slash operating expenses and reduce carbon output.
Community hubs. Schools already provide critical community services, not only school itself but also facilities for local community groups, charities, EarlyON, and other essential services. Etobicoke deserves an engaged and experienced Trustee who will work to identify expanded opportunities to make the most of TDSB properties for the communities that depend on them.

Civic Virtue and Canadian Values

With Canadian sovereignty and democracy under increasing threat, it's more important than ever to ensure that schools reflect and teach the core Canadian values that define who we are as a nation. The world needs more Canada, now more than ever, and that's only going to become more true as the next generation enters an increasingly fragmented and hostile world. Canada is rising to the challenge; we must ensure that the next generation is equipped to continue Canadian global leadership.

To that end, educational policy should continue to inculcate civic virtue and core Canadian values:

Truth. In a world where disinformation runs rampant and lies spread freely from halls of power, critical thinking and a love of truth are more important than ever before. Schools are the first line of defence; nations such as Finland, who are used to being under narrative attack by a more powerful and aggressive neighbour, have pioneered effective counter-disinformation tactics that are worth emulating here.
Justice. Canadians are known for our fairness, decency, and keen sense of right and wrong. We must not allow bigotry or violence to take root in our schools.
Democracy. Around the world, democracy is under attack. It is essential that schools give students a firm understanding of not only how democracy works but why it is so important. This includes giving kids a meaningful voice in the democratic process - real say in how their schools operate and how their government interacts with their lives.
Community. Welcoming, inclusive schools can be the cornerstone of their community. We are all in this together; our local schools can provide hubs for charitable efforts, volunteer work, tool libraries, community gardens, and other means to provide for stronger, healthier, more connected communities.

Community Commitments

TDSB Trustees are a part time role, and the newly expanded wards are massive - our Trustee will be expected to cover Etobicoke Centre and Etobicoke Lakeshore, which together have more people than Kingston, Ontario (which has 9 Trustees).

But parents, students, and educators expect and deserve an active, engaged Trustee.

Tim brings a lifetime of experience working in low-resource, high-impact roles to the challenge. That experience is how he intends to deliver that fully active role while still being realistic about balancing a full time career (and two incredible kids).

To that end, Tim commits to the following community engagements:

Quarterly education townhalls. With the newly expanded borders, it can be tough to get everyone together in one place. Tim has years of experience designing and leading digital town halls with thousands of attendees, and he'll bring that experience to work here, committing to such a town hall every quarter for parents and students in the district.
Roving in-person office hours. Tim commits to visit each of the neighbourhoods in the ward for in-person "office hours" events, giving parents and students a direct line to bring him their challenges and suggestions.
School visits. Over the course of the term, Tim commits to visiting every TDSB school in the ward, speaking to educators and admin to hear first-hand what they need to do the best job possible for their students.
Student participation. Tim commits to meaningful student engagement in major policy decisions, and an open ear to their suggestions and ideas. Ultimately, Tim is keen to explore participatory budgeting, giving students a real say in how actual money is spent in their district.
Volunteer opportunities. After years hosting community events, Tim has a long history of working with student volunteers, and is keen to streamline the process for students to find volunteer opportunities in their community. Tim commits to developing a volunteer opportunities database that quickly and easily connects students to organizations and events where they can get their volunteer hours and build their civic engagement.