Peel Catholic trustees have left their board open to a provincial takeover by defying the government and refusing to support a slate of staff and service cuts that would have eliminated a $16.6 million deficit.

The plan, the less aggressive of two proposals, was prepared by board staff under the direction of a provincial adviser sent to the board in July by Education Minister Sandra Pupatello.

As they went through the list of 31 possible cuts line by line last night, it quickly became clear that the trustees were unwilling to make enough cuts to secretarial positions, busing for specialty programs, special education services or a highly successful reading program to pass the overall plan being recommended by the adviser.

At midnight last night, the trustees appeared to have made a choice of non-compliance by avoidance as they lingered over the repercussions of various cuts.

Earlier in the evening, chair Peter Ferreira said the board had been trying for a year to send a message to the government about longstanding underfunding of its 141 schools.

"This is what the minister does not understand — that this is not a fight between the minister and a handful of school trustees," he said. "It is a fight between the minister and tens of thousands of parents, teachers and staff, all of whom want to know when the government is going to live up to its promise to fix the funding formula."

The crowd of hundreds of uniformed students, parents and board employees signalled their disapproval of the proposed school cuts and occasionally applauded trustees who spoke angrily about being forced to make reductions that could hurt students.

The trustees were warned by adviser Peter Lauwers, however, that if they failed to make the cuts that would eliminate the deficit, they would probably lose control of the board to a provincially imposed supervisor.

"There is never enough money for educators to do everything they want to do," he told the meeting. "You are going to reach the moment of truth tonight. There are better days ahead if you make the right choices."

Pupatello, he warned, would send in a supervisor — just as the former Conservative government did four years ago in Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa. This time though, the public wouldn't complain because where the Conservatives had cut education spending, the Liberals had been pumping money into schools.

Pupatello, impatient for a resolution in Dufferin-Peel, stopped short of brandishing that threat in an interview yesterday.

"This thing has been dragging on a year. I fully expect them to pass a balanced budget and they have had an inordinate amount of help," the minister told the Star.

"I've been helpful but there's a limit. At some point this board needs to be responsible," she added.

The government claims Dufferin-Peel's operating budget has risen by about $100 million in the last three years. Per-student funding rose 15 per cent during the same period.

Along with boards around the province, including the two in Toronto, Dufferin-Peel blames its budget deficit on the province's school funding system, a formula trustees say has left them short in critical areas such as special education, teacher salaries and busing.

After a year of stalling to avoid budget cuts, the 11 Peel Catholic trustees and their community have spent the last two weeks considering two similar deficit management plans to eliminate a $16.6 million shortfall from the board's $670 million operating budget this school year.

Trustees in both the Toronto public and Catholic boards have quietly speculated that the minister's tough stand in Dufferin-Peel is meant as a caution to them as they test public opinion on their own deficit elimination plans.

Toronto District School Board trustees go to their constituents in a series of meetings starting Monday. They are asking parents, students and unions whether the country's largest school system should still be paying for community pools, parenting centres and other services that aren't covered by the province's education funding formula. If the board is going to get rid of its $84.5 million deficit, some say it has no other options.

Across the road, Toronto Catholic trustees are also looking for a stay in cutting $34 million worth of teachers and textbooks from their schools.

"The biggest hit will be felt by our most vulnerable students," said Dan Milne, president of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic Chapter of the Association of Professional Student Services Personnel.

"(That will happen) when vice-principals are diminished, when our custodians are unable to maintain our standards, when secretaries are required to add more demands to an already overloaded list, when our education resource workers deal with increased numbers of special needs students."

The association represents school, psychologists, social workers and speech pathologists, groups whose jobs are threatened by the cuts.