By Pepper Parr
March 1, 2017
BURLINGTON, ON
It was hard to get a real fix on the size of the crowd – but it was a crowd of people who wanted to know more about what the Halton District School Board meant when they talked about possibly closing two of the city’s seven high schools.
It was a large fully engaged crowd – who will wonder for the next while if they are getting all their questions answered.
The Board has had a PARC in place for more than three months. This group of 14 people – two from each high school – had been tasked with coming up with a recommendation on which, if any, of the high schools should be closed.
The issue was that Burlington has 1800 + empty high school seats which it does not expect to fill for some time.
The problem is compounded by the fact that the city’s newest high school is filled to overcapacity and that other high schools might need portable units.
The problem is to some degree one of changes in the boundaries that were created that determined which high school a student would have to attend.
When the PARC process started in December the focus was on the recommendation that Central and Pearson high school be closed.
Large posters with maps showing possible high school boundaries were set up for public viewing.
During the PARC process there were recommendations that Bateman and Nelson high schools be closed – and that brought a lot more people into the discussion which resulted in the very high turnout Tuesday evening.
People were engaged and asking a lot of questions. The data that was put in front of them was not as clear as it could have been.
Tuesday evening the public saw people from Nelson and Bateman wearing their school sweaters; one parent paraded around wearing a graduation cap.
The discussion and explanations at the six different information stations was directed by senior board staff who touted the board line.
The members of the PARC were present and many of the trustees attended as well.
Which high school will these two attend?
Director of Education Stuart Miller was not at the meeting. He is away for a short period of time on personal matters. The last thing that can be said is he is ducking the issue. He is in this up to his eyebrows and he knows how serious a problem his board faces.
There are decisions that were made six to seven years ago that created the problem he faces; he however has to deal with the reality that today there are 1800 empty seats and the province will not give the Halton Board the funding it needs to keep them empty. Miller points out frequently that the Halton Board is pretty close to the bottom of the list on the amount of funding per capita that it gets from the province.
Three city Councillors in this picture – two others were floating around as well.
Many people wanted to see city council involved in this process; just as many felt it was a school board matter and none of th city’s business. And up until now city council members said very little. That has changed. Every member of council could be seen walking around chatting people up; the exceptions were the Mayor and ward 1 Councillor Rick Craven.
School board trustees for Burlington have been almost glued to this process; the other seven were seldom seen. Last night there were four or five from other communities.
Scott Podrebarac, chair of the Program Accommodation Review Committee explaining some detail to a parent.
There were no introductory remarks. People just walked in, were given a four page flyer that explained what the information on the walls was all about and people were left to walk around and ask questions.
Part of what is taking place is each high school arguing why they should not be closed – there was no higher level look at what Burlington will look like should some high schools be closed.
Burlington is in a state of transition. The city’s population is ageing and the cost of housing is mushrooming.
There will be a lot of discussions taking place in thousands of households across the city in the weeks ahead.
Ward 1 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward, on the left, is also the PARC representative for the Central high school parents, listens while a Board o Education staffer explains some of the information on the posters.
The second public meeting, with an agenda that is identical to what took place Tuesday evening at Hayden high school will be held at the New Street Education Centre on Tuesday March 7th.
If there were 400 people at Hayden last night look for an even higher turn out next week
Councillor Ward sits on the PARC committee, yet mayor gold ring takes the high road- conflict of interest much?
I sure heard a lot of completely wrong answers being thrown out by board staff and Superintendents, and others. The options on the walls were missing key information in some cases, had confusing information in other cases and, when pointed out to planning staff, they responded with “well it would be too much work” to fix it. So much of the Board’s data through this entire process has been incorrect or skewed in a way that they are not comparing apples to apples from school to school, that it is ridiculous. And now the public is supposed to absorb all this bad and confusing data, and answer a survey. So far the board is 0 for 3 on surveys, the creation of them by Ipsos notwithstanding. And on this particular one, the representative from Ipsos actually said at the last public meeting that the survey is unscientific, that anyone in the world can fill it in, as many times as they want, and that you could in fact pay people to fill it in multiple times. So the point of the survey is what, exactly?