Education Action: Toronto

by Janet Bojti

Program Area Review Team committees (P.A.R.T.s) and Accommodation Review Committees (A.R.C.s) were few in number from Sept 2010 to June 2011 when compared to the previous year. The TDSB reduced activity to stall the process until after the Provincial Election on Oct. 6th, 2011 in the hopes of eliminating the importance of school closings as an election issue. Toronto neighbourhoods can look forward to an onslaught of school closings in 2012.

In all four P.A.R.T. discussions this school year there was no mention of declining enrolment. Rather the opposite. New housing development and increasing urban density in those communities meant schools were looking for ways to increase in size. No controversial issues here.

The A.R.C.s were a different story. The TDSB attempted only two of them, one in Rexdale and the other in downtown Regent Park. Both target closing schools in low income neighbourhoods; both have met with stiff community resistance. The results? The Board has temporarily discontinued the Rexdale accommodation review and there’s an angry downtown community ready to fight back against the closing of their school.

The P.A.R.T.s:

Bluehaven Centre P.A.R.T.

School	Enrolment	No. of portables
Daystrom PS-JK to 5	566	0
Gracedale PS-JK to 5	860	7
Gulfstream PS- JK to 8	461	0
Humber Summit MS-6 to 8	590	3

Four schools (above) in the Islington Finch area are going to undergo deep retrofits at the total estimated cost of $11.4 million. Daystrom, Gulfstream and Humber Summit will each get three new classrooms and Gracedale will be given seven. Ten new housing developments are coming to the area over the next six years- at least two will have over 1,000 units. Additional space is needed in the local schools. The original proposal, announced in Nov. 2010 was to reopen Bluehaven Centre, a TDSB school closed a few years ago due to declining enrolment and later rented to a private school. Bluehaven sits on 6 acres of land which was formerly a residential and commercial land-fill; the board considered it too expensive to reopen. It will be made surplus and sold instead.

Parents on the P.A.R.T. committee, who had recommended reopening Bluehaven because of its convenient location south of Finch, were angry. Staff decisions overrode the community’s recommendations to open a new school and glossed over their safety concerns about children crossing Finch Ave. At the public meeting, parents urged staff to look into additional accommodation possibilities St. Gaspar, an empty neighbourhood
Catholic school. Staff was unaware of its existence but promised to investigate. The plan goes for Board approval in November 2011.

Fairmount Jr. P.S. P.A.R.T.

School	Enrolment	No. of portables
Fairmount Jr. PS-JK to 6	262	2 arriving Sept 2011
Bliss Carmen MS-6 to 8	445	2

Fairmount Jr. P.S. in the Kingston Rd. and St Clair E. area is going to convert to a JK to Grade 8 elementary school to ease the high enrolment pressure on Bliss Carmen M.S. Grade seven will be retained in Sept. 2011and grade 8 in 2012 for a total enrolment of 381. Two portables will accommodate the art and music classes for Fairmount’s “arts-based curriculum.” No other building modifications and no capital expenditure will be undertaken.

Oakridge Jr. P.S. P.A.R.T.

School	Enrolment	No. of portables
Oakridge Jr. PS- JK to 5	733	6
Samuel Hearne MS- 6 to 8	302	0

In the Dec. 2011 P.A.R.T. meeting in the Victoria Park and Danforth Ave. area at Oakridge Jr. P.S., senior staff tried to convince the parents to relocate the grade four and five students at Oakridge to nearby Samuel Hearne M.S., making Oakridge a JK to grade three school and Samuel Hearne grades four to eight. Angry parents presented a petition with 400 names demanding full day kindergarten and a daycare centre maintaining unemployment among women in their community is 20% due to nonexistent affordable child care. Teachers presented a list of concerns re. the Board’s proposed JK to 3 school. Staff replied that all day kindergarten wouldn’t arrive anytime soon, adding that Before and After School programs are have to be cost recovery with a $30.25 per day fee.
Out of the blue, a letter to parents on April 27th, 2011 announced that full day kindergarten will be arriving at Oakridge Jr. P.S. in Sept. 2012 and that the TDSB is planning to construct three new kindergarten classrooms on the site. The letter further stated that the proposed reconfiguration of the two schools was off as well. Oakridge will remain JK to grade 5 and Samuel Hearne will remain grades 6 to 8. No public community meeting has been scheduled yet for Sr. staff to announce this recommendation.

John Fisher Jr. P.S. P.A.R.T.

School	Enrolment	No. of portables
John Fisher Jr. PS	522	1 (no room for more)

John Fisher, located at Yonge and north of Eglinton, is facing the crush of increased enrolment due to urban intensification. Two new classroom spaces were created in the basement this year but it still isn’t enough. Parents were distressed to learn that due to space restrictions, the Junior Kindergarten enrolment will stop in Sept. 2012. Parents will have to enroll their kids elsewhere for JK. John Fisher will become SK to grade 6 single track French Immersion.

The A.R.C.s

The Jamestown A.R.C.

Schools involved	Enrolment	LOI Rating
Albion Heights Jr. MS -JK to 8	415	235
Elmbank Jr./ MS- JK to 8	550	118*
Greenholme Jr. MS-JK to 8	507	29
Humberwood Downs Jr./ MS-JK to 8	1 014	364*
Melody Village Jr.-JK to 5	353	127

The five schools are located north of Rexdale Blvd. on both sides of Highway 27. In the Local Feasibility Report presented to the Board on Dec. 15th 2010, Sr. staff states that all the above schools except Humberwood Downs are “underutilized” and recommends the establishment of an A.R.C. to consider “consolidation of schools or boundary changes or grade configurations.” However, they have yet to get started.

The Parent councils got organized immediately. Their community was no stranger to the upheavals of a school boundary change. Ten years ago families in three high rise buildings on Queen’s Plate Dr. were shut out of their neighbourhood school, Humberwood Downs, a short walk from home. Since then their kids have been bussed to Elmbank Jr. M.S*.- too far for a parent to walk to- where students face poverty and violence and struggle in school. Some of the Queen’s Plate Dr. parents accused the TDSB of discriminating against them in favour of higher income residents within the revised Humberwood Downs* boundaries.

In March 2011, a group of Jamestown parents from Elmbank, Greenholme, Albion Heights and Melody Village made a deputation to the trustee’s standing Committee for Planning and Priorities with a proposal for an expanded and democratically elected Accommodation Review Committee. They proposed an ARC with teacher reps from each of the five schools as well as school board worker reps from each school elected by their peers, three parent reps and two community reps from each school all to be elected by the school councils and two secondary school student reps elected by their student council. Together with the Board appointed members, the number of people on the Accommodation Review Committee would total 45. Further, the voting members would be all the elected reps plus the five school principals and these people would
select the chairperson and determine the use of any facilitator. Although their proposal was enthusiastically received by the committee members, the Board never formally responded to the Jamestown parents’ proposal.

Director Chris Spence met with the Jamestown parents at a later date and held an informal Q&A session about the education challenges in this community. In April, the superintendent tried once without success to appoint an Accommodation Review Committee. Parents resisted. So far this A.R.C. has not got off the ground. Expect the TDSB to make a move after the October 2011 provincial election.

The Regent Park A.R.C.

Schools involved	*Enrolment	LOI Rating
Church St. Jr. P.S. /Native Learning Centre -JK to 6 and 9/12	274 – 40 (NLC)	314 -202 (NLC)
Jesse Ketchum Jr /Sr – JK to 8	420	245
Lord Dufferin Jr/ Sr- JK to 8	498	6
Market Lane Jr/Sr – JK to 8	370	86
Nelson Mandela /Park PS – JK to 8	477	2
Regent Park/Duke of York Jr- JK to 6	381	3
Rose Ave. Jr – JK to 6	711	102
Sprucecourt Jr – JK to 6	355	8
Winchester Jr/Sr- JK to 8	380	97

*The enrolment numbers were taken from the TDSB’s website “Find Your School” pages. The handouts provided at the public meetings showed headcount numbers for 2009 which are consistently lower. This A.R.C. involved all but three of Ward 14’s thirteen elementary schools but they’re worth noting nonetheless.

Schools not involved	*Enrolment	LOI Rating	Ministry capacityUtilization rate
Toronto Island/ Natural Science School	164	409	229	67.5%
Rosedale Jr	177	454	190	93.4%
Whitney Jr	300	475	417	72.1%

(* All the figures for these 3 schools are from the TDSB’s Facilities Index 2009. Note how Rosedale was originally designed as a small school for less than 200 kids.)

The draft A.R.C. recommendations are:
1. Close Regent Park/ Duke of York Jr. P.S.
2. Convert Sprucecourt from JK to grade 6 to Jk to grade 8
3. Eliminate the JK at Winchester. This will allow the school to become a single track French Immersion School for SK to grade 6 and make additional space for its increasingly popular program.
4. Allow English language students to remain at Winchester making the school dual track English and French for grades 7 and 8.
5. Transition the remaining English language JK to grade 6 students out of Winchester if their numbers are too small for a viable programme. Allow English language students in Grades 7 and 8 to remain.

The way for this A.R.C. was paved by a P.A.R.T. in 2009 which consolidated the two French Immersion programs at Market lane and Winchester into one SK to grade 8 French Immersion site at Winchester. This A.R.C. was also preceded a two years earlier by provincial approval and a huge one time grant from the Government of Ontario to reconstruct Nelson Mandela Park Public School because it was considered ‘prohibitive to repair.’ This project predates the TDSB’s Five-Year Capital plan. Nelson Mandela Park Public School’s rebuilding is also part of the City of Toronto’s Regent Park Revitalization project. The new building is slated to become a “community hub” with a school, child care space, an employment centre, recreational facility and community centre integrated into the site. The $18.18 million building is under construction and expected to be finished by Dec. 2012.

The urban renewal of Regent Park began a decade ago and will continue into the next decade. Many parties and stakeholders have been involved in the planning and consultation in this large scale city redevelopment from Parliament St. to the Don River and from Bloor St. E to Lake Ontario in the most densely populated urban area in Canada. It is a massive public/private sector work in progress. Plans alter as events and economic and political dictates arise.

At every public meeting in the Ward 14 A.R.C. complaints were made that the Board had not publicized meetings well enough nor made known its intentions to the community for conducting an A.R.C. in this part of the ward. A number of those present said they had only heard about it by word of mouth. People who live across the street from the school said they’d never received any of the flyers although Sr. staff assured them 50,000 had been distributed. It was argued that many area residents- people who had lived near Regent Park/Duke of York Jr. P.S. – had been transferred out of the community to other TCHLC units until new homes are built for them in their former neighbourhood. Those residents had never been contacted about the A.R.C. and its public meetings.

Many parents expressed anger at the loss of the Junior Kindergarten at Winchester. They observed that “everything has been pre-determined.” Opinions were far from unanimous about the benefits of a single track French Immersion school at Winchester. Parents felt the JK to grade 6 English language students were being shut out of their neighbourhood school and that a two track English language and French Immersion school would be more inclusive to the community, “It ceases to be a community school. It serves the Board’s purposes only. It was presented as the only viable alternative.” Some questioned the Board’s plans to transition Winchester’s SK to grade 6 English language students to Sprucecourt and asked about crowding issues at Sprucecourt as a result. “I’m an active parent. I wasn’t in the know about these meetings. These decisions are pre-made. Our parents invested their time and their recommendations were ignored.”

Others present questioned the wisdom of closing Regent Park/ Duke of York Jr. P.S. They stated that future need for schools and their adjacent green spaces is likely to be greater because of the Regent Park Revitalization. They also stated that since much of the urban redevelopment has yet to occur, the need for local schools over the next decade is unknown and with all the new housing yet to be built, the area will likely be facing an increase not a decline in enrolment.

The Briar Hill A.R.C. – began in Dec. 2009 but still unfinished as of June 2011.

Schools involved	*Enrolment	LOI Rating
Briar Hill Jr	175	167
West Preparatory Jr	440	385
Fairbank MS	240	126
Fairbank Memorial CS	256	85

• As above the enrolment figures were taken from the TDSB’s website “Find your School” pages. The numbers are for 2010- 2011 school year enrolment headcount. They are considerably higher than the “actual enrolment” for Sept. 30th 2010 quoted in the Staff Update Dufferin-Eglinton Accommodation Review June 16th, 2011 handout.

The ARC recommendations are: 1. close Briar Hill Jr. P.S. 2. convert Fairbank M.S. and JK to Grade 8

The early public meetings (2009-2010) were spirited and well attended. Dozens of deputations were heard. Briar Hill parents and neighbourhood residents spoke out loudly in defense of the small elementary school in a community of predominantly lower income, immigrant families. Sr. staff towed the line on declining enrolment. This A.R.C. has been a classic David and Goliath contest with the interests of parents in a larger school located in a wealthier community pitted against those in a small school located in a high needs neighbourhood. West Prep’s child care facility draws families out of Briar Hill’s attendance boundaries. Just under half of West Prep’s attendance comes from outside its attendance boundaries. Briar Hill’s child care facility closed some years back so were its after school programmes; its building has been allowed to crumble. Building additional classrooms for West Prep, a well maintained site, has been mentioned but until the question of Briar Hill’s closing is settled, no money will be assigned for there for renovations nor estimates for divulged.

At the eleventh hour, the trustee for ward 8, Howard Goodman, proposed a new JK to grade 3 school on the Briar Hill site incorporated into a high rise commercial or residential development. This has delayed the Board’s decision on the outcome of this A.R.C. A feasibility study exists with a plan for a 20,000 sq. ft building to accommodate 200 elementary students with the remaining land severed and redeveloped for residential purposes although no financial estimates or drawings have ever been available for the public to view.

At a June 2011 meeting held to “update the community,” staff admitted misgivings about the impact on enrolment from demographic changes in the area due to housing turnover, neighbourhood child care centres, potential redevelopment and the impact of new full time kindergarten. They stated they were uncertain what the impact of converting Fairbank M.S. from grades 6 to 8 to JK to grade 8 would have on neighbouring JK to grade 6 Fairbank Memorial Community School. In a surprise move, Sr. staff announced a change in West Preparatory’s boundary. It has been moved further west assuming an area that heretofore had been Briar Hill’s catchment area.

Parents expressed anger about the feelings of insecurity at Briar Hill generated by this A.R.C. They said parents won’t enroll their children at Briar hill because they know the school is closing but don’t know when so they’re sending their children to local the Catholic school instead. A Briar Hill teacher, critical of the trustee’s proposed “plan” which leaves no space for a play ground, stated that 2010-2011 had been the “worst year ever” at Briar Hill; the process is “decimating the students, the school and the community.”

Sr. staff stated they would reconvene a community meeting in October or November. Deputations will be possible then. Decision time, it was announced, will be in November when staff will bring recommendations to the Board’s Planning and Priorities Committee.

Conclusions

1. The Board continues to target low income, high needs communities for school closings. When a high needs community school and a wealthier neighbourhood school are in the same ARC, the wealthy community’s school is preserved.

2. Differing tolerances for school “utilization” when it comes to schools in wealthy communities are beginning to emerge. The TDSB’s stated goal is to have all its schools at or above 80% utilization. Compare “utilization rates” in four schools. Two schools are located in a wealthy community the other two in low income, high needs schools in Scarborough recommended to close in Sept. 2011 due to under enrolment.

Schools	Full-time Enrolment 2009	LOI Rating	Ministry Rated Capacity	Utilization Rate
Whitney Jr	300.5	475	417	72.1%
West Preparatory Jr	379	385	508	74.7%
Heron Park Jr	238.5	131	305	78.2%(slated to close Sept. 2012)
Peter Secors	195	71	268	72.8%(slated to close Sept. 2012)

(the above figures are taken from the TDSB’s Facilities Inventory)

2. Parents in A.R.C. and P.A.R.T. public meetings continue to complain about “predetermined decisions” and that their input is ignored. Parent members on P.A.R.T. committees complained that they were “rushed” and “not given all the information to make decisions” and maneuvered toward the Board’s desired selection.

3. The A.R.C.s continue to engender bitterness. Some parents who had served on A.R.C. and P.A.R.T. committees were put on the defensive. When the community consultation process ends in rancor, the school community is affected adversely.

4. The TDSB is susceptible to opposition. Superintendents and meeting facilitators are determined to quarterback their A.R.C.s and P.A.R.T.s through as instructed. However, in the face of well organized opposition as in Rexdale or Briar Hill, the Director will delay the process or ,as occurred in Jane – Finch the previous year cancel it.

5. The P.A.R.T.s are inconsistent. They can begin with one stated purpose and end with another. At Finch and Islington, the Board announced it was going to open the Bluehaven Centre providing an additional school in an area with a growing population. Then, at the second public meeting, it reversed its decision and announced the four schools in the area would get deep retrofits instead. At Oakridge a major grade configuration with a neighbouring middle school was announced to the community but later cancelled with all day kindergarten and a school addition promised for 2012 instead. These reversals are likely made at the Director’s level.