Membership with ECNO offers clear benefits for Ontario’s smaller school boards: access to expertise, cost savings through shared services and software licensing, and staying ahead of trends via communications, committees, and the annual conference. But does ECNO provide the same value to the province’s largest school boards, which have more flexibility in their budgets to negotiate contracts and build robust internal IT teams?
“One key advantage for boards of any size is the ability to shape our organization’s strategic priorities to fit everyone’s needs. It’s an opportunity to lead and learn about the entire system,” says Wayne Toms, ECNO’s Executive Director, who worked at larger school boards for nearly 30 years before retiring to lead ECNO. “I gained a strong appreciation for collaboration with ECNO, being part of a collective voice, and having authority over program development.”
According to some of ECNO’s largest school board members, their investment in ECNO is justified and equal to that of smaller boards.
York Region District School Board, the province’s third largest with around 128,000 students, realizes annual cost savings through ECNO programs like Shared Services and software licensing. However, Paulla Bennett, Executive Officer of Information Technology and Business Continuity, says the biggest advantage is the collaboration with boards across the province.
“We don’t need to solve problems 72 different times, 72 different ways. The magic is in solving things once with 72 voices. This is ECNO’s strength,” says Bennett. “There is great benefit in learning from our peers.”
Bennett notes that collaborating with smaller school boards is a particular value for larger boards. “Smaller boards are often very innovative, and their practices and solutions can be scaled to larger boards with some tweaking. That’s where ECNO Shared Services has proved itself for our board.”
James Proulx, Executive Officer of Technological Support Services with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, agrees. “Smaller boards can be more agile and adopt new technology more readily, providing great learning opportunities for larger boards. ECNO is very good at facilitating this type of information sharing.” he says.
Proulx, a longtime ECNO member, has seen the value of ECNO from both smaller and larger board perspectives. He worked for a small school board for 24 years before joining the OCDSB in 2022. At the smaller board, he accessed many of ECNO’s services to round out internal capacity. At the OCDSB, one of the province’s largest with 78,000 students, he quickly embraced all of ECNO’s programs. “ECNO is very good at facilitating information and best practices sharing, and it was important to be part of that,” he says.
Like Bennett, Proulx also realizes cost savings in areas such as licensing costs and the Cyber Awareness Month program, which runs in partnership with the Ontario Ministry of Education. “ECNO’s partnership with the Ministry’s Cyber Security Division is very good. They created the Cyber Awareness Month materials, which are just great. That has saved us a lot of work and money.”
Both Proulx and Bennett praise ECNO’s efforts to strengthen the IT sector’s relationship with the Ministry, reinforcing emerging issues and shared goals, and ensuring ECNO has a seat at the table for important initiatives and conversations. This role will grow increasingly important as the Province’s Bill 194, which will regulate cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and children’s digital information, moves forward in 2025.
“The work the team has done in the past three to four years has really reinforced all that ECNO is capable of doing. They play a very important role in our sector and as a connection to the Ministry of Education,” says Proulx.
Both Paulla and James encourage all boards, large and small, to embrace the opportunities that ECNO provides to help them reduce costs. In addition, all boards should take advantage of ECNO’s sharing opportunities that will undoubtedly grow the capacity of IT departments to a level that would not be achievable without provincial coordination.