It’s highly debatable whether much money would be saved by eliminating the Catholic school boards. Even in rural/low population areas, there isn’t that much duplication of services or schools under capacity that would be fixed by merging. And there’s some argument that the two boards create a competition for students.

I will admit, I’m biased because I went to Catholic school and had a good experience. If I ever have children, I’ll probably send them to Catholic school, but they’re also the better board academically in my area, and are not that religiously crazy. Some Catholic boards in Ontario are just vile! If we were setting up a school system from scratch, of course we’d wouldn’t include a Catholic system, but we have to start where we’re at.