Every candidate for school board trustee in Ontario is listed on this site, with one question put to each of them. This article sets out what the question asks, where the duty it describes comes from, and where a new trustee learns the job.
Summary
Ontario elects its school board trustees on Monday 26 October 2026. School Board Research has published Ontario Trustee Candidates 2026: every certified candidate at all 72 district school boards, 1,218 people standing in 526 trustee areas (as of 15 October 2026), with the contact details each candidate has published. Each candidate has been asked one question, and every answer and every non-answer is shown beside the candidate’s name. The question is whether good governance will be the candidate’s first priority, starting with the three documents the province requires every board to keep.
- 1,218 candidates are listed: 408 sitting trustees running again, 4 former trustees and 806 new candidates. 271 are acclaimed and will take office without a vote. 970 have been sent the question at an address they published; the rest are shown as Not contacted. (as of 15 October 2026)
- Good governance is not a slogan. Under the Education Act, the board, not its staff, develops and maintains its policies, monitors whether they work, and develops the multi-year plan; each trustee is required to carry out his or her responsibilities so that the board fulfils those duties.
- The three documents named in the question are the ones the province requires of every board: a code of conduct under Policy/Program Memorandum 128, a bullying prevention and intervention plan and policy under Policy/Program Memorandum 144, and the accessibility policy, multi-year accessibility plan and annual status report under the Integrated Accessibility Standards. On the day of the 2026 review, no board met every requirement tested on any of the three.
- The sector’s own training program, Good Governance for School Boards, explains the job. The province made six of its 21 modules mandatory in 2025. The modules on roles and responsibilities, the board’s role as policymaker and multi-year planning were left optional. A candidate can read all 21 now.
1. Every candidate, in one place
The candidate list at /election-2026/ was built from the certified candidate lists published by municipal clerks across Ontario, board by board and trustee area by trustee area. It names every candidate for every seat on every district school board, English and French, public and Catholic. For each candidate it shows the board, the trustee area, whether the candidate is a sitting trustee, a former trustee or new, whether the seat is acclaimed, and the email address the candidate published for the campaign. A board’s candidates can be reached directly by adding the board code to the address, for example /election-2026/#TVDSB.
Only an address the candidate published for the election is used: one on a municipal clerk’s candidate listing, on the candidate’s own campaign site, or on the Waterloo Region Votes guide. Addresses on board websites are not used, because a sitting trustee’s board address is not a campaign address. Where no such address was published, the candidate appears as Not contacted and can still answer through the answer form. Candidates are asked to check their own entry and to write to info@schoolboardresearch.ca if anything in it is wrong.
The counts as of 15 October 2026: 1,218 candidates at 72 boards for 526 trustee areas; 408 sitting trustees running again, 4 former trustees and 806 new candidates; 271 acclaimed; 970 sent the question by email, in English or French according to the board, and 248 shown as Not contacted.
2. The question
Every candidate is asked the same question. Sitting trustees are asked: Will good governance be your first priority, starting with having the board’s code of conduct, bullying prevention and intervention plan and accessibility documents meet the provincial requirements at our next review in January 2027? Yes or No, and why? Where your board’s documents fall short today, why was that not addressed during this term? New candidates are asked the same question, opening with If you take a seat on the board.
Answers are published the day they arrive, in the candidate’s own words, up to 150 words, on the candidate list beside the candidate’s name. A candidate who has not answered is shown as not having answered. As of 16 October 2026 at 8:51 a.m. ET, 54 candidates had answered (the current count is on the candidate list, which shows when it was last updated). In January 2027 every board’s website will be reviewed again and the results published board by board, with each trustee’s answer beside them. The question is not customized to any board: a candidate can see where the board stands today on the Board Report Card.
3. What good governance is
The word governance is used loosely in election material. In Ontario it has a specific content, set by statute. Section 169.1 of the Education Act places the responsibility on the board as a body. Every board shall “develop and maintain policies and organizational structures” that promote student achievement and well-being, a positive school climate and the prevention of bullying, and effective stewardship of resources; shall “monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of policies developed by the board” in achieving those goals; and shall “develop a multi-year plan aimed at achieving” them (Education Act, s. 169.1(1)(d), (e) and (f)).
Section 218.1 places the corresponding duty on each trustee. A member of a board shall “carry out his or her responsibilities in a manner that assists the board in fulfilling its duties under this Act, the regulations and the guidelines issued under this Act, including but not limited to the board’s duties under section 169.1”, shall “entrust the day to day management of the board to its staff through the board’s director of education”, and shall “maintain focus on student achievement and well-being” (Education Act, s. 218.1(a), (f) and (g)). The director of education, for his or her part, works “within policies established by the board” (Education Act, s. 283(2)).
So the division is this: trustees decide what the board requires, in policy; staff decide how it is carried out, in procedure. The sector’s own guide puts it the same way. A policy “articulates what must be done and the rationale for it, but does not deal with how it is to be done”, and a procedure “provides the details of how policies are to be implemented” (OESC 2022, 46). Good governance, in the sense the question uses, is a board that has adopted the policies and plans the law requires of it, in the form the law requires, and that checks whether they are being followed. It is the part of the job that belongs to trustees and to no one else. The difference between a policy, a procedure and a plan, and who is responsible for each, is set out in Policy, Procedure and Plan: A Guide for Boards and Trustees.
4. The three documents
The question names three documents because they are the ones the province requires of every board in terms, and because each has now been read at all 72 boards.
- Code of conduct. Policy/Program Memorandum 128 requires every board to have a code of conduct, and was rewritten in 2024 with new content. The 2026 review tested eight requirements. No board met all eight.
- Bullying prevention and intervention. Policy/Program Memorandum 144 requires a bullying prevention and intervention plan, which the Education Act requires the board to post on its website, and a policy that must include a path for parents. The review tested fourteen requirements. No board met all fourteen; a plan was found at 28 boards and a policy at 29. (2026 review, September and October 2026)
- Accessibility. The Integrated Accessibility Standards under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 require an accessibility policy, a multi-year accessibility plan and an annual status report, in a form a person with a disability can read. The review tested fifteen requirements. No board met all fifteen.
The results for every board, requirement by requirement with the board’s own documents, are on the Board Report Card. The sector results and the letters sent to the Minister of Education and the Minister for Seniors and Accessibility are in 2026 results. None of this is a finding that a board has contravened the law, and none of it is legal advice. It is a reading of what each board publishes, against what the province requires, on a stated date. A candidate who wants to know what the job will ask of them in January can read their own board’s card now.
5. Where a trustee learns the job
The training exists and is open to anyone. Good Governance for School Boards is the 21-module trustee professional development program hosted by the Ontario Education Services Corporation with the four trustee associations. Each module is a web page; no registration is needed to read it. In 2025, using a power added to the Education Act in 2023, the province made six of the 21 modules and four Essential Governance 2025 webinars mandatory for sitting trustees and directors of education (Education Act, s. 8(1), para. 3.4.1; OESC 2025).
Three modules bear directly on the question and were not among the six: Module 3, Roles and Responsibilities; Module 7, the board’s role as policymaker; and Module 6, multi-year strategic planning. None of the 21 modules, and none of the webinars, covers the bullying prevention and intervention plan, the multi-year accessibility plan or the Ministry memoranda on codes of conduct and bullying. School Board Research’s reading of the program is in Trustee Training and the Governance Gap. The sector’s reference text, Good Governance: A Guide for Trustees, School Boards, Directors of Education, and Communities, 2022-2026, is published by the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association.
Trustees elected on 26 October take office on 15 November 2026. A candidate who reads Modules 3, 6 and 7 before then, and reads their own board’s report card, will know what the board is required to have, what it has, and whose job it is to close the gap.
6. Before election day
For candidates:
- Check your entry on Ontario Trustee Candidates 2026.
- Read your board’s results on the Board Report Card.
- Answer the question through the answer form, or the formulaire de réponse. Answers are published the day they arrive.
- Read Modules 3, 6 and 7 of Good Governance for School Boards.
For voters:
- Look up your board’s candidates and read their answers, or note who has not answered.
7. Data, method and limitations
The candidate list. Candidates were taken from the certified candidate lists published by the municipal clerks who run school board elections, checked page by page on 15 October 2026 against every page that publishes them (245 clerk and board pages). Withdrawals shown on clerk pages were checked against the list. Candidates who withdrew after the nomination deadline remain on the ballot and remain on the list. The list is updated daily until election day; the count in this article is the count on 15 October 2026. A candidate whose entry is wrong can write to info@schoolboardresearch.ca.
Addresses. An address is used only where a municipal election listing, the candidate’s own campaign site or the Waterloo Region Votes guide publishes it for that candidate. The source of every address is recorded. Addresses are used to send the question and for nothing else.
The results. The figures in section 4 are the 2026 Board Report Card results, read from each board’s public website on stated dates in September and October 2026. Each requirement is scored met or not met, with no partial credit, and every determination that turned on a judgement was decided against written rules. The requirements tested are not the whole of any instrument. The results are research findings about published documents, not compliance verdicts.
Boards. This article names no board. Board-level results are on the Board Report Card, where each can be read with its evidence.
References
Education Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. E.2, ss. 8(1) para. 3.4.1, 169.1, 218.1, 283(2), 303.3. e-Laws consolidation from 22 September 2026. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90e02
O. Reg. 191/11, Integrated Accessibility Standards, under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/110191
Ontario Ministry of Education. 2024. Policy/Program Memorandum 128: The Provincial Code of Conduct and School Board Codes of Conduct. https://www.ontario.ca/document/education-ontario-policy-and-program-direction/policyprogram-memorandum-128
Ontario Ministry of Education. 2021. Policy/Program Memorandum 144: Bullying Prevention and Intervention. https://www.ontario.ca/document/education-ontario-policy-and-program-direction/policyprogram-memorandum-144
Ontario Education Services Corporation (OESC). 2022. Good Governance: A Guide for Trustees, School Boards, Directors of Education, and Communities, 2022-2026. https://www.opsba.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EN_Good-Governance-Guide-2022-2026_en_aoda_final.pdf
OESC. 2025. “Essential Governance 2025” and module pages, Good Governance for School Boards: Trustee Professional Development Program. https://modules.ontarioschooltrustees.org/
School Board Research. 2026a. Ontario Trustee Candidates 2026. https://schoolboardresearch.ca/election-2026/
School Board Research. 2026b. Ontario School Board Report Card. https://schoolboardresearch.ca/board-report-card/
School Board Research. 2026c. Trustee Training and the Governance Gap. 25 September 2026. https://schoolboardresearch.ca/2026/09/25/trustee-training-and-the-governance-gap/
Legal disclaimer. School Board Research is not a law firm, its researchers are not lawyers, and nothing in this article is legal advice. The results are research findings about documents published on board websites, read against a written method, available on request, on the dates stated. They are not findings that any board has contravened the Education Act, Policy/Program Memorandum 128, Policy/Program Memorandum 144, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005, the Integrated Accessibility Standards or any other law; only a regulator, the Ministry or a court can make that finding. A reader who needs advice about their own situation should consult a lawyer.
School Board Research publishes independent analysis of Ontario school board data and policy. We are not lawyers, and nothing in this publication is legal advice. If you identify an error, please write to info@schoolboardresearch.ca. Corrections are noted on the page where they are made.
Corrected 16 October 2026: the summary said 526 trustee seats; 526 is the number of trustee areas.
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