First meeting of citizens who will produce a report on high school closing options gets off to a good start - begins with a parent demonstration.

News 100 redBy Pepper Parr

January 31, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The community got to get a bit of a sense as to where the Halton District School Board is going with the Program Accommodation Review that is now underway.

The Board recommendation to the trustees is to close two of the seven high schools in the city.

The parents at Central high school oppose this and are providing the board and the public with data to support their argument that there is no need to close Central high school.

PARC Jan 27 - school reps

Parent representatives from the seven Burlington high schools discussing the high school closing options that were being considered. Some of the words used were less than respectful.

The parents at Lester B. Pearson argue that their school was fine until the Board of Education changed boundaries and had students taken away from Pearson and sent to Hayden which is now at 125% + capacity.

The procedure is a multi-level process. The Board of Education staff see a problem with accommodation levels – a report is given to the trustees,

The trustees decide that there should be a Program Accommodation Review.

A PARC (Program Accommodation Review Committee) is formed and begins to hold their meetings.

The first public meeting of the PARC was held last week.

The PARC will produce a report which they will give to the Director of Education who will then prepare a report to the elected trustees who will make a decision as to whether or not any of the high schools should be closed.

The Gazette has reported extensively on the various meeting. Those news reports can be found elsewhere.

The process of reviewing the available information and going through the mountains of data given to the PARC has begun.

PARC anxious parent

Central high school parent had a front row seat.

For the next several months a group that includes two parents from each high school along with a number of advisors will review, discuss, debate and finally produce a report for the Director of Education on what they feel are his options.

The Director of Education will then give the trustees his final recommendation and they will decide what should be done. They can do whatever they think is in the public interest.

What was taking place last Thursday was a meeting where between 40 and 50 people watched what 30 people were doing on the other side of the room – with no microphones to pick up the sound.

The public got to hear Chair Scott Podrebarac, a Board of Education Superintendent tasked with shepherding the PARC process, outline the procedures.  He is supported by Kirk Perris, a senior vice president with Ipsos, a leading public opinion research firm who is serving as a facilitator  and data analyst on contract with the Board of Education. Perris  has a doctorate.

One could pick up some of the conversation at the tables. It was obvious that the PARC people were heavily engaged in discussion working from 3 inch loose leaf binds containing all kinds of data.

The PARC had the framework they are expected to work from presented to them with some explanation

There were comments on the December 8th public meeting where it became evident that there were competing interests. The data collected indicated parents wanted their children to be able to walk to school; less use of any form of transportation.

Parents wanted more information on the fiscal issues and wanted to hear a lot more about boundaries that are created.

The public wanted to know more about what there was going to be in the way of future public meetings.  Kirk Perris admitted that they lost the debate on how the December 8th public meeting went and asked rhetorically what a public meeting would/should look like? The old chestnuts transparent, robust and clearer got tossed into the discussion.

While Director of Education Stuart Miller is not part of the PARC process he did say in his short remarks that the data the public and the PAR Committee have been working from is based on the LTAP – Long Term Accommodation Plans; a document that is revised every year by the Board’s Planning department.

The Board has surveyed anyone that moved. The students were surveyed; the school board staff were surveyed and the parents were surveyed.

As the 30 some odd people settled in to begin their work Miller again commented that the recommendation that was put forward was “the one that fit”: he didn’t say what it was being fitted to.

Alton has a spanking new high school with air conditioned classrooms; the envy of every high school student in the city. The school is part of a complex that includes a library and a recreational centre.

Hayden high school – opened in 2012 took in students who used to attend Pearson. That reduced the Pearson enrollment to the point where the school was recommended for closure. Meanwhile Hayden is now at close to 120% capacity.

The parents at Pearson high school are saying that if the board gave that school back the students that were transferred to Hayden – a school that is over capacity now and has 12 portables with WiFi that could be a lot better, Pearson would not be at the 65% accommodation level that requires a PAR.

When the PAR process started there were 19 options – there are now 23.

The first task now is to begin eliminating some of those 23 options.

With the introductions and the overview explanations done with – the PAR Committee members were broken into two groups.

One group had the parents who were chosen by the parents group of each high school plus Milton school board trustee Donna Danielli who served as an advisor.

The other table had the people chosen by the Board of Education from people who had “expressed an interest” in serving on the PARC. The Board asked people who wanted to serve to apply and the board vetted that group. They were looking for balance in age, gender, diversity and geography.

Podrebarac and Ridge

PARC chair Scott Podrebararc, on the left with city manager James Ridge who is representing the city.

City manager James Ridge was put in with the Expression of Interest group. He didn’t appear to be saying all that much. What isn’t clear to many is what does Ridge have as a mandate? Is he there to serve as an information resource? Has he been given a clear mandate from city council? All we know is that the Mayor thought he would be a great choice to represent the city. Nothing was heard at a city council meeting on what he supposed to do – other than “represent” the city which was invited to be at the table.

The seven representatives from the high school parent groups and the seven representatives from the Expression of Interest groups are the people who will decide what the report that goes to the Director of Education will contain.

Scott Podrebarac who chaired the “Expression of Interest” group started by going through the 19 options staff had identified and getting a sense as to what his group felt about each option. While it was very difficult to hear what was being said at the tables Podrebarac seemed to be leading the conversation and working at whittling down the list that kept getting longer.

Principals from each high school were on hand to answer questions; the Manager of Planning Dom Renzelli was prowling from table to table answering questions.

The evening got off to an interesting start when about 50 parents from Pearson high school put on a boisterous demonstration outside the Board offices on Guelph Line where the meetings were taking place.

 

While very difficult to hear what was being said it was evident that Podrebarac was leading his group while Kirk Perris was letting his group work out where they wanted to go. Hearing a PARC participant say “Oh come on” suggested that the conversation was animated

Podrebarac later said that he and Perris would compare and compile notes and get the agenda ready for the February 2 meeting.

The PARC is scheduled to hold four working meetings.

There will be tours of the high schools set up for February 7th and 8th.

What came out of the first working meeting? Difficult to tell at this stage.

HDSB Parents at PARC 1 Jan 26-17

Parents paying close attention to the PARC proceedings last Thursday.

It was a full meeting – but very much in the early stages. The members of the PARC are getting a feel for each other – where each school representative is. Sharon Picken, a parent representing Bateman high school was very direct with her comments which members of the audience found a little offensive.

Picken was overhead saying to former trustee Dianna Bower, who is representing M.M. Robinson, that she, Picken, thought “whoever wrote this isn’t even human”. Picken was commenting on the submission from Central high school parents.  The PARC has meeting norms about respectful comments that the Central people want to see put firmly in her place.

Meed Ward who is participating as a parent with a son at Central high school – she also has a daughter at Aldershot high school, was her usual self – asking questions and pressing for answers.

Bateman school rep - confirm

Bateman high school parent and PARC member Sharon Picken.

Three of the four Burlington school board trustees attended.  Trustee Richelle Papin was ill.  The trustees play no role in this part of the process – all they can do is observe.

What was interesting was that none of the trustees from Milton or Oakville attended – Burlington has four of the 11 votes that will decide what gets done with the high schools in the city.  How the other seven trustees vote is critical.  Burlington needs to ensure that it has the support of at least two of the other seven trustees.

If the issues becomes one of how does the Board of Education pay to keep high schools that are nowhere near their capacity open – and there are trustees who see fiscal prudence as their primary role – then Burlington might have a problem.

These meetings are going to be drenched in data – keeping on top of it all is going to be a challenge.

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3 comments to First meeting of citizens who will produce a report on high school closing options gets off to a good start – begins with a parent demonstration.

  • Yvonne

    Why is the City involved especially the City Manager ??????? Can the Mayor stop please !!!!!!!!

  • Lynn

    Off to a good start? I’d say it was a complete joke.

  • David Fenton

    As a parent I chose to live on the West side of Brant St so my son could walk to school.
    It is fundamentally important they have stability within the community.
    We as a family went without a lot of things to afford this, and considered it an investment in our Sons future.
    He is currently living and working in the U.S. and is a parent to two wonderful boys, surprisingly he has adopted the same reasoning we had, kids are an investment, not something that has to be economically rationalized….You only get out what you put in people.