Keep Jane Finch Schools Open
No School Land Sales
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is trying to close one or two elementary schools in our community.
Driftwood, Shoreham and Gosford are being threatened.
The TDSB wants to sell closed school lands to pay for needed repairs and aditions to their buildings because the province will not fund these properly.
This sell off will not solve the Board’s problems but it will take valuable community resources away from you and your children.
We could see two or three school sites closing and being sold off here in Jane and Finch.
The Board has formed a school closing committee of parents and others called the Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) to look over the facts using the Boards data.
The Board staff knows now how they want to reorganize the schools here.
If, after listening to all the data, the ARC does not agree with these predetermined plans, the Board staff will recommend what ever it wants to the Director of Education and the Board. The ARC report will just be an ignored index. This has happened frequently in other areas of the province. In other words, the ARC is powerless to stop the process. It can only resist it.
No school should close in Jane/Finch. The children and their communities now and in the future need those schools operating as schools and not as profitable housing for some developer.
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The Board will tell you: |
We believe: |
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They are concerned about the children’s education and that is why things must change. |
Boards are being forced to do this because of the provincial funding formula that penalizes boards for having half empty schools even if those schools are doing a good job educating our children. |
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Research says that a good school should be grades K-8. |
There are good arguments for most grade arrangements. Our three level system allows educators to concentrate on the learning styles of each level and avoids large factory like schools for our younger children. A K-8 will put 14 year olds in the same playground with four year olds. Is that the model we want for our children’s school? |
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There should be a 450 minimum enrolment in an elementary school. |
The 450 number is for that K-8. It can be much smaller for a K-5. Principals should be able to run a good K-5 with 200 students if the board lets them. |
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There will be fewer transitions for students. |
Transitions are not an important issue on parent’s minds. They are more concerned about high quality education, student safety and a caring staff. |
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Research says that bigger schools are better schools. More specialized areas and staff. |
Again, you can also find experts who will dispute this. But bigger schools mean fewer community based schools. This is an economic argument. Bigger schools are a bit cheaper to run. Yes it would be great to have a full time librarian but in a larger school they would have less time for each grade. |
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The buildings are half empty. |
Only the Board and the ministry care about this. If the local school is doing a good job educating children, why should parents care about the other half of the school? The Board should start creating the community hub idea in those spaces. And what is going to happen when the all day kindergarten program is started? |
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There is room for all the students from closed schools in the new K-8 schools. |
But have they planed for all of the development that will happen with the new Spadina subway and the Finch and Jane light rail transit lines? Does their figures deal with the new provincially mandated all day Kindergarten? Will we see 13-14 year olds in overheated portables to accommodate this? |
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Staff will try to show how declining enrolment will shrink our schools. |
As good as these numbers are, there will be an upturn eventually and these classrooms will be needed again. As well, the city is projected to have over 1,000,000 people in ten years in in-fill housing. Where will their children go to school? |
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Nothing can be done about the funding formula. |
This is simply not true. We elected this provincial government to do what we think is important and we believe community schools are important. |
We must fight this wrong headed agenda.
If you are on the ARC, do not be bullied into a decision to close schools. Make sure all your meetings and information are public. Invite other points of view to speak at your meetings. Hold your own meetings without TDSB staff to find out what you really need to know.
Errol Young, Former Trustee North York Board 1982-1997
For more information see saveschools.wordpress.com or email erroly@sympatico.ca or contact the Residents Task Force at 416-644-2073.
