More than $100 million annually has been diverted from funding programs for underprivileged students in order for the Toronto District School Board to balance its books , a new report from Social Planning Toronto says.

“The total amount (of funds diverted) is approaching $1 billion,” said John Campey, executive director of Social Planning Toronto, a non-profit community organization committed to improving the lives of Torontonians.

The Ontario government provides extra funding for students deemed to face demographic hurdles: low-income families, single-parent households, parents with little formal education and families that have moved frequently.

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The money is meant to provide extra help through homework clubs, tutors, mentoring and summer literacy programs that can level the playing field between these children and their more affluent peers.

The report warns this is a dangerous diversion of dollars away from the neediest students.

Of the $128 million in such “Learning Opportunity Grants” Queen’s Park gave to the TDSB in 2012-13, the report says only $40 million — about 31 per cent — has been spent in the targeted areas . The rest has been used for general expenses such as payroll, it says.

As well, the report finds that 25 per cent — about $20 million — has been diverted from funding the TDSB gets for English as a Second Language programs.

The school board wasn’t able to answer questions from the Star.

“Since it’s a Sunday, I can't check with staff to get the details/numbers, etc. on this so I wouldn’t be able to speak to you about it,” said TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird.

Campey said the problem dates back to the creation of the Learning Opportunity Grant program to fill the gap created when boards lost the ability to levy taxes after the amalgamation of cities in 1998.

“It’s important that either this money is for kids living in poverty or it’s to top up the board’s budget,” said Campey, a former principal in two inner-city schools. “If it is just to fill the budgetary gap, say so. Don’t pretend it’s about supporting the education of kids in poverty.”

The problem is twofold, according to Jeff Kugler, the executive director of Urban Schooling at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

The province is underfunding school boards, which leaves boards to make tough, often disastrous decisions on how to balance the books, as Queen’s Park mandates, Kugler said.

So the TDSB, Kugler said, can legally use money from learning grant and ESL programs for other purposes because they aren’t “sweatered.”

“There are many grants that are ‘sweatered’ to show the province’s money is being spent as intended,” Kugler said. “But these two funds aren’t sweatered. There are no checks and balances.”

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The Ministry of Education said it provided $143 million to the TDSB for the Learning Opportunity Grants in 2012-13, which differs from Social Planning Toronto’s figure of $128 million.

“Ultimately, locally elected school boards are in the best position to determine how to allocate their resources within their schools,” Education Minister Liz Sandals said in a statement to the Star.

Nigel Barriffe, an elementary school teacher at Greenholme Home Junior Middle School in Rexdale, said the lack of funding has yielded terrible results.

He said his school has a large percentage of students whose families’ first language at home isn’t English. But they don’t have the capacity to provide extra English lessons.

“From the time a kid enters kindergarten they’re coming to school with much fewer words than a child that comes from a home where English is the only language,” Barriffe said. “And by Grade 3, when they are learning to read, they are behind, and when they reach Grade 4, when they’re reading to learn, they’re way behind. And it’s very difficult to catch up.”

Mahad Mohamood, 24, grew up in the TDSB system after arriving from Somalia and went to C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute for high school.

“We didn’t have the same resources such as tutors or counsellors and we didn’t even know that those could be available — and were available at some of the schools in better neighbourhoods,” Mohamood said.

He lost interest in school and performed poorly until his family decided to send him to a relative’s home in Kitchener.

“There was just so much more available to me in Kitchener,” said Mohamood, who graduated and is now studying at Ryerson University.

With files from Louise Brown