Today, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) appointed three outstanding educational leaders to the roles of Associate Director.

The three newly-created senior leadership roles are part of larger structural changes to the TDSB’s Senior Team that aim to reinvigorate the Board’s focus on higher achievement, school improvement, student well-being, equity and service excellence.

Manon Gardner has been named the new Associate Director, School Operations and Service Excellence. An innovative and highly-experienced educator, Gardner has been with the TDSB in increasingly senior roles for over 20 years. In her current role as Executive Superintendent of Teaching & Learning, Alternative and International Education, she led the transition of the teaching & learning team to support the Learning Centre strategy, established a strategic professional learning plan for staff and led and implemented the Internationalization Strategy for the TDSB.

Stepping into the role of Associate Director, Equity, Well-Being and School Improvement is Colleen Russell-Rawlins. An advocate for educational equity, Russell-Rawlins has been with the TDSB in increasingly senior roles for over 20 years. In her current role as Executive Superintendent of Learning Centre 3 and Early Years, she has led teams that delivered on complex Board and Ministry of Education priorities and has co-designed and successfully implemented school-based improvement processes, which have led to sustained improvement in achievement.

Dr. Kathy Witherow will become Associate Director, Leadership, Learning, and School Improvement. Witherow, who joins the TDSB with more than 30 years in education, is an experienced Supervisory Officer with leadership expertise in the elementary and secondary panels in the York Region District School Board and as an instructor in the Masters of Education programs at the University of Toronto and Queen’s University. She comes to the Board from the Ministry of Education, where she led a team of Student Achievement Officers to support continuous system and school improvement.

The new Associate Directors, together with the Associate Director, Business Operations and Service Excellence, will provide focused leadership for the achievement of the Multi-Year Strategic Plan, the Board’s Vision for Learning and the Integrated Equity Framework.

“We are so fortunate to welcome three exceptional leaders and look forward to beginning the new school year with a strong and focussed team in place. These new positions, together with other structural changes, support important improvement work across our system in schools and classrooms.”

- John Malloy, Director, TDSB