The Toronto Catholic District School Board

Ontario's public education system has run on a dual structure since before Confederation, guaranteeing publicly funded Catholic "separate schools" alongside the public system as a constitutional protection meant to safeguard the religious education rights of the province's Catholic minority, many of them Irish immigrants who had settled in Toronto in large numbers through the 19th century. That protection, later written into the Constitution Act, 1867, gave Toronto's Catholic community its own school board rather than folding Catholic education into the city's general public board.

A parallel system that grew alongside the public board

The board now known as the Toronto Catholic District School Board evolved through several name changes and reorganizations, most significantly during the 1998 provincial restructuring of Ontario school boards that also created the modern Toronto District School Board out of the amalgamated city's formerly separate public boards. Ontario remains one of the few places in North America with two fully public, parallel school systems, Catholic and secular, funded and governed separately but operating side by side across the same city.

Sources

• Toronto Catholic District School Board — About us
• Wikipedia — Toronto Catholic District School Board

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