By Pepper Parr

October 28, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Burlington parents with students in Central high and Lester B. Pearson high school are scrambling. The Halton District School Board (HDSB) put a series of recommendations before the trustees earlier this month that could result in the closing of the two high schools.

The Board of education is driven by provincial funding rules that require them to do a Program Accommodation Review (PAR) if the percentage of the seats available in a school that are being used falls below 65%
Central high and Pearson are at that level.

The Board situation is complicated in that the three year old Hayden high school is at 115% capacity.

Director of Education Stuart Miller explained to the trustees that the city has one and a half too many high schools – and that they are south of the QEW where the student population is falling.

The process of closing a school requires that a Program Accommodation Review Committee (PARC) be formed and that the trustees listen to what that committee recommends before making a decision.

The PARC process is to be completed by May of 2017. That is a tight timeline.

There are people in the academic world who think the province is forcing the school boards to do this the wrong way – and that opting for larger school rather than smaller school is bad pedagogy.

Schools play a central role in their communities. They are essential to economic development and they make communities more attractive to new- comers. Businesses are more likely to move to communities with schools, and families will not move to communities without schools. When a community loses its school, it loses its viability.

Extensive research over the last decade shows that small schools make excellent learning environments for students, and that, despite economies of scale, they are often cost effective because of their higher graduation rates.

Creative and proactive strategies must be developed now to recognise the value of small schools and to ensure their viability and that of their communities.

Bill Irwin of Huron University College and Mark Seasons at the University of Waterloo school of Planning argue that the push to close school doors seems to be an economic exercise, overlooking educational and community needs. Irwin is a professor of Economics and Management and Organizational Studies at Huron.
Together they have launched a website: env-blogs.uwaterloo.ca/schoolclosures/ offering a research-based platform to guide discussion about school closures.

“We believe,” the website states, “that the theory and best practices of both urban planning and public participation are good foundations from which to ameliorate the school closure process, and ultimately lead to a more effective and equitable outcome for those involved.”

The website is one of the outcomes of a 2013-14 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant.

“We’re looking at the whole issue surrounding school closures, in terms of several touchstones – as a public policy issue, and how policy is developed and delivered; as a public participation issue and the relationship between institutions and communities; and the implications of closures in terms of impacts on financial, social and human capital,” Irwin explained.

There are a number of factors driving this school closing trend.

• The last of the baby-boom generation’s children (who have created an enrollment swell since the 1970s) are now completing their secondary education.
• Ontario’s secondary school curriculum was reduced from five years to four years resulting in the loss of a whole grade of students.
• With the growing industrialization of agriculture, the loss of Ontario’s family farms has added to the exodus from rural areas.

“The research into the subject of school closures is grounded in developing and implementing a better decision making process with regards to accommodation review. To complement this, the researchers are concentrating on three areas of focus; public participation, urban planning, and the accommodation review process itself. We believe that the theory and best practices of both urban planning and public participation are good foundations from which to ameliorate the school closure process, and ultimately lead to a more effective and equitable outcome for those involved.

“One of the key components to realizing this objective is the ability to achieve an increased awareness of this issue, and to encourage an informed discussion between government officials, policy makers, school board administrators, and civic leaders alike. To support this, the researchers have provided material that they believe will enable a wide range of stakeholders to become better informed about the various guiding aspects of accommodation review and school closures.”

A major problem the closing of a school stumbles upon is that planning is a municipal function – and in Burlington the Board of Education and city hall tend not to work very closely together; the two don’t have an organizational structure they can meet on as equals.

The last time there was an educational issue that involved the city was when the Charles Beaudoin School wanted to add more portables – but in order to do so they had to get permits from the city.

The parents at the school didn’t want more in the way of portables so they pressured the city not to give the Board of Education what they said they needed.

The school board eventually got permission to install additional portables – just not as many as they needed.

“There is documentation that will enable others to become better informed about some of the more subtle elements and underlying causations that have led school closures to become such a highly contentious and polarizing experience.

“School closure decision making process have been framed by policy makers in Ontario, through the accommodation review process (ARCs) (2006), as exercised in public participation. Critics of ARCs have decried the process being more of a subterfuge than a genuine attempt of joint institutional-community review. At its core, the research is a quest to better understand the relationship between institutions of education, in Ontario represented by the provincial Ministry of Education and local school boards, and the community.

“Furthering this understanding will require addressing the question: How do people view the concrete and practical application of school closure policy in their community? Critics of the current ARC process in Ontario have stated that the provincial government appears to ne be making use of school boards to regulate the citizenry to their own end, applying the version of the Foucauldain (a form of discourse analysis, focusing on power relationships in society as expressed through language and practices) notion of governmentality.

“The questions are: How does the community view the consequences of school closings, especially as the closing occur in local settings? How does (or do) the end results of school closings reflect what community members’ desire? or the process of review?

“The research starts with the premise that ‘true public participation’ in any policy decision rests not only with the institution listening to the community; the institution needs also to consciously include the community insights into the final outcome. Therefore institutional context and motive plays a pivotal role in determining a group or individual’s capacity to make informed choices, and then transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. Capturing that institutional context and motivation as it relates to public participation, actual and perceived, is a major focus of the research.”

Bill Irwin explains: “When I started my research – my thesis (in 2012) was on school closures – no one else had looked at this issue since the policy had come forward in 2005,” he continued, adding if the province was closing smaller community schools as a fiscal savings measure, there was no tracking of those savings. More importantly, there was no review of community costs.

“How does a closure impact students as learners? We don’t know if this is impacting students’ ability to learn or their marks. This happens in young people’s lives at the same time they’re going through emotional, physical changes. There are so many unanswered questions in this,” Irwin continued.

“The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is spending resources on rebuilding houses, while the Ministry of Education is supporting closures of community schools. We want to rebuild our inner cities, yet we want to shut down schools in their communities,” Irwin said.

“We’re taking schools from poor neighbourhoods and putting them in affluent neighbourhoods. It’s a reverse Robin Hood situation.”

“What’s more, current policies surrounding school closures ignore previous research that shows smaller schools have a great impact within their communities.

“In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, robust research literature was done on the benefits of small schools as learning environments, as having long term benefits to students. That literature has been totally ignored in this whole process,” Irwin said.

“All of us realize there will be a provincial election this year. This should be part of the discussion. How we treat our schools has a tremendous impact long-term on the social fabric of our communities,” Irwin said.

• The number of small elementary schools with full-time principals has dropped by 15%, twice the rate of the drop in all elementary schools in the province.
• The number of small elementary schools with a teacher-librarian (full- or part-time) has declined by 53% compared to a 30% decline in all elementary schools.
• Just 20% of small elementary schools have access to a physical educa- tion teacher, compared to 51% of larger elementary schools.*
• Only 25% of small elementary schools have access to specialist music teachers, compared to 61% of larger elementary schools.
• All larger secondary schools have libraries that are open full-time, but 21% of small secondary schools had libraries open only part-time.

Three quarters of Ontario’s small elementary schools and 83% of small high schools report that their schools are used by the community after school hours for everything from sporting events to ratepayers’ meetings.

Ontario’s drive to build larger schools is solely a response to an education funding formula geared to larger schools – it is an economic decision rather than a pedagogical one.

The HDSB recently approved taking on commercial enterprises that could use some of the space; meetings were held but nothing has come of this kind of opportunity so far.

The city of Burlington has been renting space in the Sims Building directly across from city hall for years. There is a consultant’s report in a filing cabinet gathering dust that sets out what the city is going to need in terms of office space and what is currently has – that report has not been released to the public yet.

After years of stopgap solutions, it is time to reverse the trend and recognize that closing a school is not simply an educational issue, it has major social and demographic repercussions as well.

The researchers declare that “we must recognize the reality of declining enrollment in Ontario, and come up with new and proactive solutions to maintain the viability of small schools and communities. It is time to develop creative ways to keep the school buildings vital and expand their role as the hub of their communities. We can take cues from other places: English small schools are inviting postal sub-stations to occupy a part of their buildings; Newfoundland has community schools that have on-site social service agencies, community radio stations, and seniors’ programs. It is possible to modify school buildings slightly so that they can function as community centres as well, and, if provided with adequate funding, day care centres enhance schools and act as a draw for young parents.”

Somewhere in the research there is mention of adjusting transportation guidelines and funding to ensure that no student spends more than 1½ hours per day on the school bus. That amount of time suggests students in Burlington are being prepped for commutes on the QEW,

The battle in front of the parents right now is the very real threat to two of the city’s high schools – there might be a higher level discussion these parents can put in front of the trustees and that is – what size of schools do we want and can we slow things down a bit and take the time needed to get this right the first time.

This article draws heavily on the work of Bill Irwin at Huron University College and Mark Seasons at the University of Waterloo.  

By Pepper Parr

October 25th, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Should the Halton District School Board trustees decide that the Lester B. Pearson High School should be closed and its students asked to attend M.M. Robinson instead that would bring to an end a school that was created for the community more than forty years ago when the idea of a community school was considered important.

The Pearson school was made even more unique when a Co-op nursery program was included. That nursery now provides classes for close to 100 children.

There are morning and afternoon sessions in a setting that will be very very hard to replicate.

Fiona Wielhouwer, with a certificate that is the equivalent to the Canadian Early Childhood Education that she earned in the United Kingdom, is the supervisor who reports to a nine parent volunteer board. That board may have a very serious and perhaps daunting task ahead of them.

The nursery co-op was planned as part of a school that would serve the wider community. A school the size of Pearson would normally have two gymnasiums – Pearson has three. The intention right from the beginning was to make the space available to everyone in the community.

The nursery serves as a student placement location for those who think they might want to work in the childhood care field. It is also affiliated with both Sheridan and Mohawk colleges where Early Childhood courses are given.

Fiona Wielhouwer explains that the nursery uses an enquiry based approach to the care they give the children. “We aren’t a drop and run location – we work with the parents and prepare the children for the JK and SK classes they will move on to – during their time with us the children get used to the idea of being away from Mommy for short periods of time and they learn to mix with other children.

The nursery interacts with the high school but administratively it is a separate organization. We do get help from the IT people in the high school and when we need something from the shop people they work with us.

As a community school it works. Pearson was never intended as a large high school. When enrollment exceeded the capacity a bunch of portables were stuck at the front of the school – they are now empty.

When the school was created it was intended as a “lab” school – a place where different ideas would be tested. The co-op nursery in a school has worked out very well. Some of that original thinking seems to have been forgotten and now it is a matter of numbers.

There are now parents who have their children in the nursery – there was a time when they were in the nursery and then attended the high school.

The city is said to have invested some money in the school when it was built and the belief is that the Region supports the nursery financially.

There was a time when there were community clubs in the school – the place was a real community hub – that too seems to have been given up on.

The school is now set out as the preferred option of the board staff for closing – the current Director of Education Stuart Miller was once the Vice principal at the school and he knows what kind of a school it is – however, his job requires him to initiate the process of determining if a school should be closed when it falls below 65% of its capacity utilization.

It is now up to the trustees to determine of the school should close – and it is up to the parents to inform the trustees as to what they want.

For the children – this week is all about pumpkins – especially the ghost pumkins.