The Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB; known as English-language Public District School Board No. 11 prior to 1999[4]) is a publicschool board in southwestern Ontario, Canada.
The TVDSB serves an area over 7,000 square kilometres which includes urban, suburban and rural communities. It spans three counties and includes the cities of London, St. Thomas, and Woodstock, plus the towns of Ingersoll, Tillsonburg, and Strathroy-Caradoc, as well as several smaller towns and villages.
As of 2024, the Board administered 160 schools (134 elementary and 26 secondary schools). They also provide alternative education programs for approximately 40,000 students through adult day school, continuing education, general interest, night school and summer school courses.
History
It was created on January 1, 1998, by the amalgamation of the Elgin County Board of Education, The Board of Education for the City of London, Middlesex County Board of Education, and Oxford County Board of Education.
Four future elementary schools in southeast London, southwest London, northwest London, west London, Lucan, Woodstock, and Belmont are currently under construction or are in planning stages.[5][6][7] Extensions and renovations to Eagle Heights are currently underway.[8][9]
Controversies
In 2021, the Thames Valley District School Board was named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit related to the sexually inappropriate behaviour of one of its teachers, Ryan Jarvis.[10] Jarvis filmed at least 27 teenage students with a spy camera while he was an English teacher at H. B. Beal Secondary School. He used a camera concealed in a pen to film his female students' breasts. Jarvis became the first person in Canada to serve jail time for a voyeurism conviction. Jarvis's teaching license was revoked following his conviction.[11] The Thames Valley District School Board was the setting of R v. Jarvis, 2019 SCC 10[12] a precedent-setting case of voyeurism in Canada.[13]
In 2021, Lawrence Thompson, a custodian at a TVDSB elementary school, was found guilty of four counts of kidnapping and sexual assault of a four-year-old girl.[14] During the investigation in 2018, the school board indicated it would fully cooperate with police and local law enforcement authorities. However, the TVDSB declined to provide a list of schools that the janitor previously worked at.[15]
In 2024, the TVDSB, and several other school boards, came under scrutiny for sending officials on trips and retreats.[16] TVDSB executives attended a retreat at the hotel in the Rogers Centre, where the Toronto Blue Jays play baseball. Though the executives paid for the trip from their own expense accounts, the optics of going on a trip when the board was in a deficit position was enough to cause the provincial government to audit their finances.[17]
Since the scandal broke, Director of education Mark Fisher has been put under paid leave.[18]
