Here's the rub .  . when we merged the old cities to create new jumbo City of Toronto, the rationale was saving $$, economy of scale, consistency of service delivery, etc.  But because public service are archaic union-bound bureaucracies overseen by populist political patrons, taxpayers ended up getting the worst of everything, the costliest of everything and years later, very little uniformity of anything.  I have seen my kids go through both the TDSB (eldest) and TCDSB (youngest) . . these were starkly different teacher/kid/parent experiences.  In terms of value-for-money, the TCDSB wins hands down because they are more traditional in offering readin', writin', 'rthmatic as the core focus and they have fewer $/student and crappier facilities at their disposal. Our "catholic" kid emerged well educated and unspoiled. Meanwhile, over at TDSB, our public kid got strikes, ineffective teaching concepts and horrendous elitism in the staff.  Agree it may be archaic, but the TCDSB does work!