Two schools will probably close next year in spite of a clearly unfair process and rising enrolments.
This is because the trustees are committed to closing as many schools as possible and selling off the land to satisfy their right wing philosophy of shrinking public assets regardless of the social consequences or the needs of the system and their pandering to their Provincial masters.
Were the trustees to reopen these issues and keep the schools open they would have to do it for all the schools they just voted to close.
And next year, those growing enrolment numbers will make it almost impossible for them to have their school closing fun.
Throughout the A.R.C. process from 2009 through to 2011, declining enrolment was argued as the main reason for the need to close schools but recent data released from the Board shows that the ten year dip in enrolment is over and the number of children needing school accommodation is back on the rise for the next 20 years at least. In fact, there are areas of the city, such asThorncliffeParkin Don Mills, where school overcrowding is the norm.
But close these schools must to keep the maniacal political orientation of our trustees true.
Poor little Briar Hill Jr. P.S.
On Monday, Dec. 5th at 5:00 pm, delegations from Briar Hill parents and community will be making deputations to the P&P Committee in a last ditch effort to persuade the committee that closing the school is not a good idea.
Please support them, if you can.
The A.R.C. recommendation to close Briar Hill was put on hold for over a year. Trustee Goodman’s proposal to incorporate the school into a high rise commercial or residential development of some sort on the site evidently didn’t resonate with senior staff.
It did, however, delay the inevitable march toward the Board’s standing committee for Planning and Priorities for initial approval of closure.
Briar Hill has been a classic class struggle.
Grouped into the same A.R.C. with West Preparatory (on the other side of the Allen Expressway) the interests of the small school serving predominantly immigrant and low income families, were pitted against those of the much larger and more middle class school West Prep situated in the north end of Forest Hill.
Not surprisingly, Briar Hill was recommended to close and West Prep is to get the expensive rebuild.
Briar Hill’s decline was planned. Its building, reconstructed many times over its 100 years, was left to crumble from neglect after amalgamation.
Teachers and support staff who have worked there for decades and loved the school and its community have transferred to other jobs rather than wait to be surpluses.
Some parents, seeking reliable school arrangements for their kids for the next five years at least, chose to transfer their kids to the Catholic system or enrol them at West Prep rather than wait for the school to close under them.
Child care services at West Preparatory already draw families away from Briar Hill.
This slow disintegration is demoralizing for a small neighbourhood school that one of its teacher once described as a “turn around school” and as one child said, “every teacher here knows my name.”
Brooks Road Jr. P.S., in easternScarboroughat Meadowvale and 401, is fighting for survival.
The Board voted to closeBrooks Roadlast June but the parents aren’t giving up.
They recently approached a TDSB standing committees in November to complain of unfairness in the A.R.C. process and that enrolment atBrooks Road didn’t justify closing the school.
Their school, built in 1971, for a capacity of 417 students now has 400 students. Its recent rise in enrolment was primarily in the kindergarten age group means that the school could have a vibrant future were it to remain open.
It ain’t about enrolment decline; its about class warfare
Brooks Rd. was in an ARC with five other schools- three of which are located on the opposite side of Highway 401- hardly an option or safe walking distance for these Seven Oaks neighbourhood residents.
Highcastle P.S. will be the destination for the Brooks Road kids if their school closes and also the destination for an expensive rebuild since the capacity at Highcastle, built in 1966, has capacity for only 320 and currently. It also has 8 portables.
Two communities, far apart from one another but linked in a struggle to save their neighbourhood schools.
From the notes of Janet Bojti.
