Save Our Schools Speeches - Sept 26 & 28 2000

David Moen for Our Schools - Our Communities

As per Trustee Chambers' request, here are my speaking notes for the delegation on behalf of Our Schools - Our Communities. Trustee Chambers correctly noted that I made some additions to the summary I submitted last week. The most significant changes are the opening paragraph, and the answers to Trustee Norm MacDonald's question, which I added at the end. As I was speaking, I made some extemporaneous edits for time, so what you see here is more than what I actually said.

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The magnitude of the number of school closures facing trustees is not a result of local conditions nor is it the will of the local electorate. The real problem is a crisis in education manufactured by the government in Toronto, through its unrealistic occupancy targets, its ridiculous insistence on tying funding for a new school in West Carleton to eliminating empty pupil places on Elgin Street; and most of all its disastrous underfunding of public education in Ontario.

Our Schools - Our Communities urges you to represent the wishes of your constituents, and not to carry out the dirty work of the Ministry in Toronto. Reject the staff recommendations.

Trustees are understandably anxious to reach a conclusion in this process, but it is hard to reach a conclusion when the target keeps changing. The number of schools to be closed and the reasons for closing them keep changing. Two years ago the target was the closure of about 25 schools in order to attain 100% utilization. Then it was 90% within the Greenbelt. Then the ministry changed its capacity ratings and suddenly 100% was attainable again. By June the number of proposed closures was 12 to 14, but this was much more than what was needed to surpass 100% . That's because there was a new goal. Now closures were being driven by a desire to reduce operating costs. This, despite the fact that for years this board and its predecessors have underspent on facility operations and skimped on repairs in order to partly counteract provincial underfunding. Now we have a recommendation to close 9 schools, with their selection clearly determined by issues of operating and repair costs, without regard to community
impact, program viability, and transportation implications.

Trustees should not think that these closures will solve the Board's maintenance backlog. And a quick look at next year's expected provincial funding shows a shortfall of more than $20M in classroom funding.

Given the constantly changing situation, and the size of the funding shortfall, it is no surprise that it is difficult to reach a final decision.

Trustees are anxious to reach a conclusion, but is the information they have been given good enough to be the basis of that decision? You have heard repeated criticism of the information in the past two nights of delegations.

While staff have made some improvements in demographic projections, there is still much cause for concern. Actual enrollments inside the Greenbelt seem to have exceeded projections by about 400 students - about one whole school. The most significant base data are years out of date. The trends applied are out of date. The most recent commercially available data samples have not been used, and the most recent trends, those used by StatsCan, have not been applied.

There also appear to be problems with the estimates of repair costs staff are using to guide their selection of which schools to close. You have heard multiple professionals take issue with the RECAP repair costs.

Trustees are anxious to get on with closing schools, but how many should be closed? We don't need to close 9 more schools to surpass 100% utilization. Closing schools won't solve the maintenance backlog or the funding shortfall. Your enrolment projections are low by about one school per year. Nine closures is too many.

Trustees are anxious to reach a conclusion to the closure process, but is the staff recommendation complete? Much work remains regarding program placement and boundary adjustments if equitable access to programs is to be preserved.

Trustees are anxious to reach a conclusion to the closure process, but surely not any conclusion at any cost. The information trustees have is insufficient to reach a proper decision board-wide. The staff report was so riddled with production errors that multiple addenda had to be issued. This is an indication of the terrible time pressure staff were under to produce something by the arbitrary deadline. How badly did the rush affect the quality of recommendations? Certainly, it seems that the recommendations for the East family show a much closer conjunction between staff recommendations, community input and trustee policy than many of the other families. The extra time and resources spent in that one family have produced a much better result. Surely better results could be achieved in the rest of the families if they were given equal treatment.

Before taking the steps that will undeniably harm students and communities, you must insist on having the best and most complete information. You must decide why you are closing schools, and hence how many you will close. And you must have a plan to properly accommodate students, with equitable access to the program of their choice.

To conclude I'd like to presume to answer a question Trustee Norm MacDonald posed to a delegation on Tuesday: "When we will have enough information to decide?"

When you have a clear idea of how many pupil places you have to close, and why you have to close them, ...

When you have demographic projections that are based on a sample less than three years old, and which use trends based on the boom of the last two years, ...

When these projection methods have been proven accurate by coming closer to actual enrollments than one whole school, ...

When you have capital funding costs that don't differ by orders of magnitude from what professionals are telling you, and which enjoy the confidence of the public, ...

When you have a complete cost-benefit analysis, which lists all the costs the Board will incur, and all the negative impacts the students and community will suffer, ...

When areas outside quadrant C have had similar staff support, and similar opportunity to discuss alternate approaches as quadrant C had, so you will get the full benefit of community input and avoid the risk of a lawsuit claiming unfair treatment or lack of due diligence, ...

When you have a complete plan, which handles all the boundary changes, program reorganization, portable allocation policy and other loose ends that accompany school closures, ...

... When you have all those things, perhaps you'll have enough information to make a proper, informed decision.

Until then, nine is too many, and October is too soon.

Presentations at the Sept 26 & 28 Board Meetings