The Ottawa Catholic District School Board is facing charges from the Ministry of Labour after the death of a student in May.

Mother Teresa High School student Eric Leighton, 18, was killed in May after a metal drum he was cutting in class exploded.

The school board is charged with failing to provide information, instruction and supervision to a worker, failing to take the reasonable precaution of cleaning the drum before altering it and failing to make sure the student and supervisor were familiar with the dangers of performing hot work on drums or containers.

Eric's father Patrick Leighton said he's still angry about his son's death.

"It kind of made me a little more angry actually, knowing it could have been avoided . . . well I knew the whole time actually it could have been avoided," he said. "But now it's sort of out there, there's lots of things that could have been done differently and avoided anything like this.

Each of those three charges carries a maximum fine of $500,000, with a court to decide if the board will face convictions and fines.

The school board said it had no comment on the charges, which it will start to face in court next month.

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Claudia Cautillo