Here we go again.

Once again the Toronto District School Board is in the news — and as is all too often the case, it’s not good.

This time an audit has found that public school trustees billed taxpayers for everything from nuts and hand lotion to two rooms for one trustee (John Hastings) in Whistler, B.C. — just in case the reservation on the first room fell through.

We are not making this up.

It is, in fact, all too typical of an ongoing pattern of lax spending controls, bad behaviour, personal indiscretions and generally poor management at Canada’s largest school board — a lamentable record that is facilitated and at least partly condoned by voter apathy.

The TDSB operates with an enormous $3-billion budget. That money is supposed to be devoted to educating 232,000 students across the city.

Yet how many Toronto residents can claim they know who their school board trustees are, never mind actually voted for them? And how many voters tick off a name because they recognize it, rather than because they are familiar with the candidate’s record or platform?

In the 2010 election only 50.55 per cent of eligible electors voted. But trustees are the names on the ballots most often skipped over, admits Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association. Only 45 per cent of voters cast a ballot for school trustee.

The result at the TDSB? You be the judge:

This week’s internal audit isn’t the first time the board has come under fire for spending issues. Another audit in April found trustees racked up thousands of dollars in calls to and from the Virgin Islands, Panama, Cuba, Greece and Mexico, and billed the board for dubious expenses including costs for a conference – six days after it had ended.

A Star investigation two years ago found repair and maintenance expenses at TDSB schools to be outrageous: $143 to install a pencil sharpener, $190 to replace a toilet seat, $2,442 to mount a whiteboard on a wall.

An Ernst and Young audit last December found $1.3 million in unauthorized raises for senior staff, and noted there was a “culture of fear” among staff about speaking out when problems arise. That audit also criticized trustees for interfering in day-to-day operations of the school board.

Board employees complained earlier this year that they had been subjected to “abusive, threatening and insulting comments” by some board members. Nine of the 22 trustees themselves said they felt threatened by some of their colleagues. The situation got so bad in March that former board chair Chris Bolton asked police to attend TDSB meetings in response to threatening behaviour by a trustee.

To make matters worse, the board’s top official, education director Chris Spence, was forced to resign after admitting he had plagiarized an article for the Star. And Bolton himself stepped down suddenly in June, without explanation, amid controversy about an educational charity that he and his partner were involved in.

All of this is, at best, a distraction from the challenges facing the school board. It also saps public confidence in elected officials – at least among those voters who are paying attention.

That’s why it’s vital that Torontonians take school board elections more seriously when they go to the polls on Oct. 27. Amid the ongoing circus that is the city’s mayoral campaign, it’s easy to overlook what’s at stake in voting for school board trustee. But it’s high time that came under much greater scrutiny.

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So pay attention to who will control your school tax dollars, and oversee the education of our children. Don’t just tick off the most familiar name, or the first one on the list.

The TDSB is due for wholesale change. After four years of spending scandals, management failures and misbehaviour on the board, it can’t come soon enough.