Marc asked an interesting question in a comment.
“Whose interests are being served” by school closing.
I do not have that information but I have an opinion based on three decades of watching the Board.
It was 29 years ago when I was first elected as a trustee in North York and the Board was closing a lot of schools, Over 30 eventually.
The motive then was to balance budgets in a time when enrolments were plummeting. Then we were seeing almost half the school population compared to twenty years earlier.
There was no interest in selling any schools except in unusual circumsances.
Today, school are being closed even when their populations are adequate to support programs. (Check the GAPP report from . The Board does not make it easy to get this file so I saved a copy)
Upon closing, the lands are turned over to the Toronto Lands Corporation for quick sale.
What is driving that is the provincial formula that forces boards to skimp on facility spending and no encouragement to preserve our public assets.
But Marc’s question asks more than that. He asks why the change from boards reacting to population reality to boards hell bent on land sales.
First, let me put on my tin foil hat.
Well, I believe that the right wing agenda that is driving governments and much of the media has caved into the pressure of the wealthy who decided to abandon the rest of us three decades ago.
Think tanks influencing leaders and politicians along with rapacious international banking institutions started to clamour for the restriction of public services that were built up in the start of the twentieth century.
The rich, fearing a soviet style revolution, felt powerless to stop the growth of unions that pushed incomes up to a living wage for workers, progressive politicians who believed in creating economic opportunities for all and others.
The millions of soldiers returning after WWII expected a better life to the depression they left.
Schools were built, universities liberalized so much that even I was allowed in with mediocre marks.
Prosperity trickled down to a new middle class and small business people.
The income disparity in North America shrunk in a way never seen in human history.
But it could not last.
Using the oil crisis of the seventies and other ‘disasters’ the rich started to take control.
After all they owned the banks.
They pushed for free trade which allowed them to use their money to make profits anywhere in the world with the cheapest and more repressive labour deal.
They shipped manufacturing offshore and abandoned the workers here.
But they were left with the equity legacy of the century. There is no way they want to cut school, medical, housing and other services that were so bitterly fought for just a short while ago.
So using their tools they demand that even municipal services bow to the erosive forces hitting provinces, countries and the world.
That this trend is short sighted is irrelevant.
The rich believe that increasing their ownership of the world economy will guarantee them stability; but it won’t.
Think of France 1790′s, Russia 1917, Haiti 1805.
Oh well; you asked.
That is why, I believe that there is a push to close and sell off as many schools as possible.
Off comes the foil hat.
