Imagine if a neighbourhood community group was given a grant specifically to set up a food bank to feed the hungry and impoverished among them, and instead it spent half of that money on local park improvements. When asked, they’d point out that they couldn’t otherwise afford the park improvements, and they benefit everyone, including the hungry and impoverished. Would that be OK?

Well, no, I don’t think so. Because they were given the money for the explicit purpose of serving a specific need. Because it was supposed to be targeted to the neediest, not to the general benefit of everyone. It was an attempt to level the playing field, not to re-sod the entire yard in its existing imbalanced state so everyone could enjoy the nice lawn at whatever relative height they already stood.

I think this it is analogous to the situation at the Toronto District School Board, which is taking money it is given specifically to serve the needs of socio-economically disadvantaged children, and using 48 per cent of it instead to balance its general budget. That’s the inescapable conclusion of a report from Social Planning Toronto my colleague Andrea Gordon has reported on last week, based on numbers provided by the school board itself: that in order to pay for things across the system – like elementary school principals’ salaries, regional outdoor education centres and classroom computers – it has been diverting money given to it by the province that is intended specifically to provide special programs and resources for those at risk.

This is funding the needs of everyone — including the most affluent and advantaged students in the city — by raiding the funding given for the most disadvantaged. It’s shameful.

Yet board director John Malloy didn’t express shame when speaking to reporters, the Star reported. Instead he sought to defend the practice, saying, “It is directly connected to student achievement. It does support our students at risk, but it also supports their classmates as well.” Some of the money, he said, was used to pay for things that support students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, which, he “emphatically” pointed out, is in line with what the “regulation expects.”

Well, I don’t know about interpreting the strict requirements of the regulation itself, but I do think we can look at the stated purpose of the funding to see right from wrong. In its education funding technical paper, the Ministry of Education says the grant in question, the Learning Opportunities Grant Demographic Allocation, “provides funding based on social and economic indicators that are associated with students having a higher risk of academic difficulty. This allocation supports boards in offering a wide range of locally determined programs for these high risk students.”

Let’s notice: it says it is for programs for these high risk students. It does not say, “for students of all socioeconomic backgrounds.”

And yet, even in defending its practice, the chair seems to openly acknowledge that the board is using the funds for things other than programs specifically for the high risk students. The numbers provided by the board that Social Planning analyzed show specifically that much of the money is fed into a pool that funds things board-wide: those outdoor education centres that are accessed by students in Rosedale and Rexdale alike, alternative school programs in Moore Park and Malvern equally, on supply teachers for both High Park and Regent Park.

Now, as both Social Planning and the board say, these things do need to be funded across the board. And trustees are not given a lot of options: they cannot easily raise taxes or revenue on their own, and they need to balance their budget, and many of their costs (such as teacher salaries) are mandated by the province but not fully funded by the ministry. It is understandable that if they are given discretion over the use of grants like Learning Opportunities, they will use them to, in their own words in a footnote to a recent report, “help offset the funding gaps.” Understandable, but not acceptable.

Because the alternative is providing more programming, as intended, to at-risk kids. Which would mean for its budget balancing act, making it explicit to both the province and to parents — especially in affluent neighbourhoods where they may have more institutional savvy, connections, and resources to apply political pressure — that there simply isn’t enough money to fund the things that need to be funded. If, instead, they provide less programming to the poor and disadvantaged to plug holes that affect students in affluent schools, they make the problem invisible to those who may be best positioned to demand more. And they do it even as, when anyone asks about the disadvantaged, people might point to this $127 million grant allocation that is assumed to be equalizing things for them.

Ultimately, responsibility for the lack of funds to balance the general budget lies with the province, and it is the province which should and must align the dollars it provides with the level of education and staffing it insists should be provided. Having at-risk children make up the difference by forgoing programs that are supposed to be funded for their benefit only makes the system worse.

Correction – January 16, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly referred to John Malloy as the chair of the TDSB.