In the most ruthless cuts ever to threaten Toronto’s public schools, trustees face the prospect of closing 12 more schools, shutting all parenting centres, eliminating junior orchestra programs, closing pools, and laying off hundreds more caretakers, secretaries and education assistants.

All this will be necessary if Queen’s Park does not boost funding immediately.

The cuts don’t stop there. Also lost would be the board’s parenting and family literacy centres at a time when research points to the importance of the early years. This cut will have a “devastating impact to children and their families,” the report concludes.

Parents only last year successfully fought to keep daytime international language and black heritage programs, which would be folded.