McGuinty’s Continued War On Our Neighbourhood Schools

 A Commentary by Doug Draper

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has the audacity to portray himself as an “education premier” and as the leader of a Liberal Party and government that encourages ‘smarter, more economically sustainable growth’ over the low-density sprawl that has been tearing at the heart of our communities and making them less socially rewarding and less affordable places to live in.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty Follows former Tory premier Mike Harris's lead on school closings

The McGuinty government’s willingness to allow ever more of our neighbourhoud schools, with their proud histories and the vital role they play as community centers for people of all ages, shows once again what a fraud this premier and his government’s promises are.

I wrote the commentary below with a plea at the end to you and to all of your friends and neighbours across our region to contact your provincial member of parliament and let them know that we have had enough of McGuinty’s wrecking ball approach to our cherished schools and to the older neighbourhoods that surround them in the heart of our communities. Let him know that we will be pleased to see his now-minority government defeated by the opposition Conservatives and NDP if it does not begin to take our concerns seriously when it comes to issues like this.

This commentary is followed by a presentation Niagara Falls resident and citizen activist Bernadette Secco made at a Niagara regional council meeting this past February 9, decrying the latest lists of elementary and secondary schools that are on the chopping block across our region, and urging people to boycott the ‘Accommodation Review Committees’ the province has set up to shield itself from any direct responsibility for gutting neighbourhood schools.

I wish to begint this commentary by saying that the older I get and the more I look around at what passes for the neighbourhoods so many of us find ourselves living in today, the more I realize that I had it pretty damn good when I was a kid.

Born in 1951 – a decade or two before low-density, sprawling development began hollowing the life out of too many older neighbourhoods across our region – I was fortunate enough to grow up in a neighbourhood where there was a real sense of community – where there was a good chance that people living even two or three blocks apart knew each other enough to lend each other a neighourly hand. It was also a neighbourhood where a kid could walk rather than have to board the yellow bus equivalent of a cattle car to get between home and school.

Thorold Secondary School, the only high school left in this community of more than 18,000, is now on the province's chopping block. Photo by Doug Draper

That is one of the things I find striking about the neighbourhoods around Thorold Secondary School, located a short distance from where I live now. You can still catch what has become an all too rare sight of many of the school’s students walking to school rather than having to ride a bus.

 Having a school so close to home may seem like a small thing to some, but it is one of the reasons there is such a strong bond between Thorold Secondary and the neighbourhoods around it. This school, which has also served so many other roles as a recreational facility, a day care centre, and a meeting place for seniors and other community groups, is a vital part of the fabric of these neighbourhoods, and it has played no small part in making people feel like they live in real neighourhoods rather than some

faceless ‘residential zone’ where the inhabitants don’t do much following the to-and-from drives to school and work than glue themselves to the screens of their televisions and computers, and bed down for the night.

The close bond between Thorold Secondary and its neighbours has manifested itself in a petition with 2,300 signatures and in the many students and their parents packing a recent meeting of the District School Board of Niagara’s Accommodation Review Committee with a plea to keep the school open.

Thorold Secondary is only one of a number of secondary and elementary schools under the control of the DSBN and the Niagara Catholic District School Board that are now on the chopping block, and I am sure that there are people living around those other schools who feel just as passionately as the Thorold people do about keeping them open.

As a parent whose own daughter has been affected by school closings, I long ago came to the conclusion that there is something terribly off about the way school boards and the province tee schools up for the killing.

Two of the more common arguments boards use for closing a school are that it is getting too old and costly to maintain, and that enrollment is down.

A drop in enrollment violates a provincial funding formula that encourages a factory farm approach of jamming as many bodies as possible into another school and its portables for the purposes of keeping operating costs down.

As for the aging school argument, I’m sure a good many people in merry old England would laugh at us for calling most any of our school buildings too old. And isn’t it odd that resources are so scarce for refurbishing our older schools, yet there seems no end of money for building new schools in cornfields to accommodate suburban sprawl.

As for rewarding sprawling development with new schools, what ever happened to the province’s “smart growth” and “places to grow” policies that encourage the revitalization of our older neighbhourhoods over sprawl. Apparently those policies don’t apply to school boards when it comes to deciding which schools to close and where to build new ones.

Bernie Slepkov, a member of Niagara Region’s Smarter Niagara Steering Committee, and Bernadette Secco, a Niagara Falls resident concerned about the boards’ school closing process, have separately criticized the lack of attention paid to ‘good community planning’ when it comes to making such decisions.

“School closures can do serious damage to older neighbourhoods  and the inappropriate location of new schools can waste opportunities to create sustainable new neighbourhoods,” says a report that regional committee prepared called ‘Smarter Schools for a Smarter Niagara’. “Currently, decisions on closures are the prerogative of the school boards with no requirement for adherence to the Provincial Policy Statement and Places to Grow legislation.”

I believe we should all contact our provincial representatives and insist that school boards refrain from closing any more schools and cramming the students into schools farther from their homes until the boards are made to adhere strictly to all of the province’s smart growth principles and policies.

What now follows is Niagara Falls resident Bernadette Secco’s February 9 presentation to Niagara regional council on school closings

It is natural to want to believe that the Administrative Review Committee (ARC) process is fair and not flawed; that the Minister has the power to act on your appeal.  But that is not the reality.  Boycott the ARC.

The ARC is the process school boards use to decide whether or not a school should close.  Either you’ve been through an ARC, are going through an ARC or are just waiting to go through one; the ARC is coming.

The province and school boards are spending tens-of-millions of dollars of our tax money building schools like this one in Niagara Falls to accomodate low-density, sprawling development on the fringes of our communities. Photo by Doug Draper

The general consensus is that the ARC process is flawed.

The first flaw is that the Ministry of Education’s Pupil Accommodation Review Guidelines for Ontario school boards were guidelines and not requirements.  Consequently, schools in Ontario are being closed based on similar, but different, criteria.

The second flaw, and in my opinion, the most egregious, is that there is NO appeal to the school board’s decision.  None.  You can appeal the PROCESS but NOT the decision.

The third, is the lack of independent third-party oversight of school boards and ARCs.

Under The Education Act, the Minister does not have the legislated power to interfere with a school board’s decision to close a school.  Many MPP’s and municipalities have asked the Minister for help only to be told, “It is a local decision and I cannot get involved”. 

It’s not that the Minister won’t  get involved.  It’s that the Minister can’t without the legislated power to do so.  The Minister cannot help you keep your disputed school from closing. 

All ARC policies in Ontario require parent, business and municipal representatives to sit on the ARC committee.  I asked the Ministry, “What would happen if the public, business and municipality withdrew their participation or refused to participate in the ARC of a school?”

The answer was, “… a community’s unwillingness to participate in the process or an inability to find representatives for the accommodation review committee does not mean the board is not in compliance with its policy or the ministry’s Guideline.  The board can still move ahead to close schools.”

What’ll happen if a school board strikes an ARC and nobody shows up?  The ARC will carry on.

It appears that statistically, once an ARC is struck, that the school is as good as closed if it is disputed;.  Remember, there is no mechanism to appeal the decision.

Boycott the next ARC in your municipality.  If you’re already involved – get out.  Encourage the parents and business reps to boycott.  Write to the Director Education, your MPP, the Minister of Education, the Education critics, the Premier and leaders of the opposition.  Tell them you’ll be pleased to participate in the ARC once the Ministry establishes a process to appeal the school board’s decision to an independent third-party.

It’s a simple strategy – and radical.  I believe it will bring these flaws to the attention of those who have the power to revise The Education Act so that the Minister can actually address your appeal for help.

Boycotting the ARC IS a viable option.

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