Raise the Hammer

You know after all these school closing down the core and all more parents are sending there kids to a french school close to to them

Queensdale, Eastmount Park and Linden Park are not scheduled to close. They are recommended to close by staff. Not that the final decision will veer from the staff plan, but they are not scheduled to close.

I'm still waiting for premiere Wynne to put the brakes on this farce. I like the OLP, but the moment the wrecking balls start swinging my vote's going to the NDP.

"Wynne ended the moratorium on school closures and increased boards’ responsibility to consult with the community and consider the community value of schools before closing them. She also established task forces to study declining enrolment and school board governance. Given her history as a school trustee and one who challenged the provincial government of the day, it is noteworthy that, as education minister, Wynne reduced the authority of school boards, refined the role of school trustee, and, in a couple of instances, appointed supervisors to oversee school board finances."

http://etfovoice.ca/kathleen-wynne-focus-on-ontarios-first-female-premier/


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-will-adjust-school-funding-formula-in-2007-1.594343

52 schools. Thanks for that John-Paul. A pretty alarming number.

Question, how does Kathleen Wynne know the true results of the communities feelings regarding these school closures?

And while they are closing schools with the left hand, their right hand is busy building themselves this self-indulgent office playland:

I vote for Crestwood students to take their land/new school back. Then we fill up some space in existing schools with board staff.

I have worked in CADD only offices and I have worked in offices that combine designers, planners, and construction workers. The later is the best way to build any system.

I have a feeling the same would work well for stutents, educators, and front line staff all mixed together too.

I totally agree and have been an advocate of that concept for some time. We have schools with extra space and administrators who need space. It seems like a pretty straightforward problem to solve....

Or populate these half-empty schools with community organizations. Centremount Neighbourhood Association, anyone?!

Educators give us boxes with cut out circles and squares and let us realize from a very young age that you can't squeeze either into the other. Then they sit with the same box and shapes and a hammer and voila. It fits. Sorta.

All the shapes can live in the same box but it takes some planning and patience to figure out how they all fit.

lawrence, this is an unfair indictment of teachers and trustees aren't educators anyway.

I don't think anyone is under the impression that front line teachers are in any way responsible for the perverse funding formulas that incentivise education policies like the closure of walkable inner city schools and busing of children to suburban mega schools. The trustees, board-level staff, and ministry officials who are responsible however, are crafting education policy that will determine how are children are taught, and many of them come from a teaching background, so it's perfectly accurate to refer to them as 'educators'.

Comment edited by highwater on 2013-10-09 14:23:55

http://www.hwdsb.on.ca/board/public-cons...

Wynne and the OLP doesn't care about anyone. Look at the wind turbine projects and the gas plants. What a joke. Staff has no control over the closures of schools. Where would that make them teach? Teachers love small elementary schools. It all boils down to money.

People keep complaining about wind turbines but I haven't heard a coherent argument against them other than "they're expensive".

Did you think saving the world would be for free?

Not an argument against wind, but certainly a mark against is the intermittent nature of supply (eg. it tends to be comparatively less windy at night), finite province-wide capacity (around 1,700 megawatts, compared to peak demand of 25K-27K megawatts) and often negligible production levels (eg. at time of posting, 289 megawatts of that 1,700, less power than is being presently being generated by coal).

In short, I suspect that you can't get around having a redundant power system as a failsafe, whether that system is nuclear, natural gas, hydroelectric, biomass or some combination thereof.

What about reducing our and the province's peak demand? What about moving, actually moving, toward solar energy?

One thing that consistently blows: Big-box edumacation factories.

and the cells with intense stress fibers by blocking cdc42 and Rho activation said Lou Von Thaer, but the occasional good film since the company often provides financing for local and international productions mostly conventional comedies!
http://www.tweaktech.com/

Central Public School, the first graded school and first large co eduacational public school in the province was also scheduled to close. This occurred during the 1970's with the same cry...declining enrollment. For those of you who do not know, Central is located in the downtown neighbourhood of Durand. Please read "Durand A Neighbourhood Reclaimed" and the "Durand Chronicles", published by the Durand Neighbourhood Association and written by Russell Elman. Learn how the School was saved. It can be done!

PS: Copies are available in the Hamilton Public Library

Great to share this information every once in awhile Jed. Central is a great example of how we can make use of empty space/schools with low enrolment until demographics change which they do.

I'd like to see us go a lot further in our solutions for filling empty space though.

Here is the HPL link to the book Jed referenced: http://hpl.bibliocommons.com/search?q=Du...

Here is a brief history of how Central was saved as mentioned by Graham Crawford. I know there was a webpage somewhere that had the history of this but I cannot find it at this moment. http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/15... Graham covers the gist in his comment anyway.

Thanks for the info!

My mom actually used to teach at Central and that is the exact model some are proposing for Armstrong.

Armstrong would be a perfect candidate for the same arrangement as Central and remarkably similar - a gorgeous historic building in an established commercial district - rent out the top floor as office space and solve an income and enrollment problem in one shot.

Of course that would mean that the board would have to spend some money on Armstrong, and there is a strong suspicion that the board is planning on closing Armstrong in 5 years or so anyway once they get funding for a new central mountain school at the Cardinal Heights property.

But it would be a fabulous opportunity for the board to actually take a progressive, popular approach to something and would go a long way to repairing the reputation that they have worked so hard to destroy recently.

Fun fact that I learned about Armstrong at the meeting last night - Armstrong was past full capacity and had an addition built in the 80's. That was not that long ago - they had people who were just as smart using the same population models as the board is using now - but their long term enrollment predictions were obviously out to lunch then - so how can anyone have any faith in the boards enrollment projections now?

Can we have people run for school trustee that are against these closings and the big elementary school model? That certainly doesn't include Tim Simmons.

Nothing but tough calls and unpopular decisions here for HWDSB in the face of falling enrolments and fiscal constraint.

Most of the schools up for review were built when our grandparents and parents were having lots of kids. We're not. And Hamilton's population growth lags other communities in the GTHA.

Too many seats, not enough students. Suspect the only way to fill these schools is to turn them into retirement communities for the Boomers who once went there as students 60+ years ago.

It would help the discussion if we knew the annual cost of running each school (salaries & benefits plus utilities and maintenance) and the cost per pupil. Would also like to see the deferred maintenance bill for all schools.

I was a little stunned and embarassed at the state of disrepair at the school where one of our kids now attend. Not exactly an inspiring place to learn or work. In need of major renovations and a new coat of paint. I'm all for building schools that are designed and wired for 21st century learning and send a message to kids that they're worth the investment.

Not sure if there'd be much support from parents to have mixed use schools, with private and public sector businesses sharing space with their kids. Would be significant liability issues.

In hindsight, maybe the HWDSB and the city could have collaborated, taken the long view and strategically mapped out where they'd like new schools to be built and given timelines. If we're serious about intensification and revitalizing the lower city, building the newest and best schools in the core would likely attract young families and parents-to-be. Build the best schools and the parents will follow. Proximity to great schools tops the list when parents are looking to make one of life's biggest investments.

The "falling enrolment" thing sounds right, but it actually isn't. Prince Philip, for example, was close to capacity and growing. The real target of the ARC was not underutilized schools, but small schools. That's what this was really about - the board wants to embrace the economies of scale and hopes that they can run a single 2000-student school more efficiently than four 500-student schools (similar attempts in other municipalities has revealed that they probably can't).

This is musical chairs with the provincial budget - the Ministry handles the construction/demolition of schools and the busing, while the Board handles operating costs and salaries. The obvious thing for the boards to do is minimize operating costs and salaries while ignoring externalities like buses and construction/demolition. But it's all provincial tax-dollars in the end.

The OLP's mishandling of this mess will be a deciding factor at the ballot box for me.

Or maybe it's easier to get funding to build a few new schools than repair and renovate many old schools.

From a past ARC meeting, we learned:

1. The funding formula for repairs and renovations is currently tied to student enrolment. More students = more funding. Small schools operating at less than 100 per cent capacity will never get enough money to cover deferred maintenance, much less make renovations. Like I said earlier, I was a little stunned at conditions in my one child's school. And it appears the only investment planned for that school is a new boiler some time in the future.

2. Many schools weren't built to last and are fast approaching or already at the end of their life cycle. I'd like to go back to the elementary schools I went to as a kid in the 1970s and 80s and see how they've held up. What's more, these schools are not built and wired for the way students learn today.

3. It's unlikely there will be an increase in funding for schools as more and more of the provincial budget goes to health care for aging Boomers who were once students in these fast-built schools back in the '50s. The status quo won't be financially sustainable.

Definitely feel for families who paid a premium to live within walking distance of a good school (we were one of those first-time home buyers who put schools at the top of our checklist).

And residents are likely wondering what happens to their property values when there's no longer a steady arrival of young families and former schools sit empty or get sold and used for other purposes.

Yet it's worth asking if a school that looks good from the street is worth walking to if the learning conditions inside the school get a failing grade and shortchange our kids?

We should start by asking what's the best learning environment for our kids and then how do we build it, pay for it and sustain it while being realistic about how much funding is available.

Stop your complaining!

School closures is happening all over because of demographics. We are not having as many children as previous generations and aborting 100K children every year. How can we possibly keep empty schools open when we have to fund senior's homes?

Some of these schools are actually close to capacity - Prince Philip in particular. They're being closed for the sake of economy of scale... as if teaching scales (hint: there are 23 students per-teacher regardless of whether your building holds 200 students or 2000).

can someone please explain to the capitalist why it's bad economics to close existing neighborhood schools only to turn around and pay to build more schools? maybe start with scott park.

The chair of Hamilton's public school board plans to step aside and is giving a run for city council serious consideration.

Tim Simmons announced last week that he would be relinquishing the top post at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board that he's held for two years to give someone else a chance to step forward. And now, he adds, to potentially prepare for his own 2014 campaign for Ward 3 councillor.

"Truth be told, others have asked if I'd consider running for something else," Simmons said Saturday. "My wife, Kyoung-Ju, and I have promised ourselves to take time with our kids over Christmas to decide how to best serve our community."

There are lots of factors to consider, he says.

For one thing, Simmons and his wife both run small businesses, and he says the shift to City Hall would be a huge transition.

Unlike the Catholic board, where Pat Daly has been chair since 1991, it is "tradition," he says, for HWDSB chairs to rotate the top position every two years.
"It is the culture of the board to share these leadership roles," he said.

His two years are up — and he sat as vice-chair for two years before that.

In a swan-song address, Simmons said he believes trustees this term successfully transformed the board into "a transparent, equitable, forward-thinking organization."


http://www.thespec.com/news-story/4234164-simmons-gives-up-top-school-board-post-eyes-city-council-seat/

I truly hope that the public remembers mr simmons' legacy of demolition next October.

Basically, schools being closed have an abundance of space, and since the funding formula does not cover sites, but is rather based on students, this is negative space, meaning a loss of money...to heat, etc. To help with that is to combine schools...perhaps not the best solution always, but how can you save money in this day and age to keep teachers, assistants, caretakers etc? The board is selling a lot of satellite offices and combining those into the new board offices, with a lot less space. This means that schools in different parts of the city will be used for meetings, working with teachers & students (as has been done for the last number of years). Instructional coaches, consultants, ELL teachers, etc. have been in schools consistently, day-to-day, for years. However, when meeting to set direction or to learn themselves, meeting in a school cannot occur. We are talking about a lot of people.