Education Action: Toronto

A brief reminder that PSSC (Programs and Schools Services Committee) meets tomorrow, Wednesday, February 23rd @ 5:30 pm in Committee Room “A” at the TDSB (5050 Yonge St.), and should have on their agenda the issue of student fees as raised last month at PSSC by members of the ICAC sub-committee. (To check Boardroom agendas, go to: www.tdsb.on.ca and click on “boardroom” in right corner of page, then click on “agendas” on side menu)

A recent meeting of parents concerned about the TDSB’s consultation process called Area Review Committees (ARCs) in the Jane Finch community boiled over into anger and recrimination towards board officials and trustees who were sent home with a very clear message that the community would not sit still for any school closings in their neighbourhood.

If you want to tell the TDSB that no schools should be closed in the Jane-Finch area, then please come to the ARC meeting on Tuesday, January 12, 2010. It will be held at Brookview Middle School (4505 Jane Street – just north of Driftwood community Centre). The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m., but if you come a few minutes early, you can talk with fellow parents and residents.

On November 11, 2009, Program Superintendent Karen Grose produced
a “briefing note” on the Education Ministry’s current Elementary
Curriculum Review for the Program and School Services Committee of the
TDSB. Its major focus was the report of a Board “Working Group” that
was “directed to examine the elementary curriculum and the question of
‘overcrowdedness.’” Normally, these reports aren’t worth bothering
about, as they tend to mindlessly reflect Ministry curriculum policy
in language designed to obscure any realistic understanding of what is
meant. This one is a little different

The TDSB has launched seven Accommodation Review Committees (the
provincially mandated “consultation” process required before closing
schools). This initiative, in a stunning reminder of George Orwell’s
“Newspeak” of 1984, is called “Better Schools Brighter Futures.” They
use this upbeat name to trumpet the virtues of larger schools (minimum
of 450 for the elementary panel) and an end to the tiered junior-
middle system in favour of K-8 schools.

Hibo Hagi-nur wants her kids to go back to the school in their neighbourhood.

For the past 10 years, she and other parents at 900, 910 and 930 Queen’s Plate Drive have been bundling about 90 children onto school buses every morning for the 4 km trip to Elmbank Junior Middle Academy.
Yet their local school is within walking distance.

When I taught at my last high school, Rosedale Heights School of the Arts in Toronto, I could never convince our head of guidance not to put DND recruitment posters up on the guidance bulletin board. Every time she did it I would come back in a few hours and remove it and throw it out. She would then say, “those darn kids won’t leave the army posters up very long.” I would tell her, of course not, they are not popular. I never have had the time to join the other educators who put a lot more time into this and I feel a little guilty about it but perhaps this helps.

For the many parents and community members with deep misgivings about the presence of armed police patrolling corridors in Toronto schools, we suggest that you tune into Antoni Shelton’s message on YouTube. Just click here. Antoni Shelton is the Chair of Education Action:York West.

Rexdale parents had strong language for their local Toronto School Board trustee John Hastings and others charged with representing their children. Worried about bottom-streaming and student profiling among other issues, parents, educators and community workers gathered at the Elmbank Community Centre Wednesday Oct 7 for a meeting sponsored by Education Action: Etobicoke North.