During this recession, will we sell public assets at fire-sale prices? Or mothball them for years to come? And what if those assets are schools nestled deep within communities in need of services?
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As the Toronto District School Board, in a perfect storm of demographic shifts and funding shortfalls, considers putting dozens of under-enrolled schools on the chopping block, it’s time for some extra-curricular thinking.
Currently, 92 schools have enrolments below 60 per cent and following an Accommodation Review Process now underway, some of them will be shut down during the next school year. But there’s more at stake here than some kids walking further to class. For starters, the city’s Official Plan calls for increased population growth in the core, so we may need some of these schools in the future. In fact, many of their facilities could be used now to kick-start economic recovery in our neighbourhoods.
In Kensington and Chinatown, we can see both the roots of the problem and some possible solutions. Forty years ago, schools were overflowing with children from immigrant families. The community was consulted to help design a new one. In an explosion of civic engagement, parents advocated new initiatives throughout the city, including heritage language and black cultural programs.
Many newcomer families have since moved to the suburbs, many homes in this area have become rental units for post-secondary students, and Kensington Community School is below capacity.
But under its forlornly quiet playground, a powerful giant is asleep. There’s another under the nearby Ryerson Community School yard, where Ward 10 trustee Chris Bolton hopes to see heating and cooling pipes installed. When partnerships are finalized, the project could generate geothermal electricity for the school, Toronto Western Hospital, Alexandra Park Housing and Scadding Court Community Centre.
In fact, a new provincially funded program to make 1,000 schools more energy-efficient could turn many under-enrolled schools into sources of clean alternative power sold back to the grid, generating revenue to help keep them afloat.
But that’s not all. Using these schools as community hubs would help people of all ages become healthier, happier, better educated and better employed. Schoolyards have space not only for generating power under the ground, but for allotment gardens above, too, providing food and recreation.
Schools are ideal for childcare, parenting centres, indoor recreation, seniors’ activities, nutrition centres with equipped kitchens, drug-free after-school activity centres for teens, community education and Adult ESL classes. Charitable and service organizations could make excellent use of school space to benefit the community. But here local needs run into a roadblock: provincial rules on school use.
If a school were half-full of children and the rest of the building occupied by neighbourhood services, Ontario’s funding formula would still classify it as below capacity and it would be at risk of closure.
Although Ontario funds many of the valuable programs listed above, it doesn’t include them in calculating whether a school is being used at capacity. Even an ESL classroom for parents is considered an “unused” school space. And unless so-called “under-capacity” schools are closed, the formula decrees a new school can’t be built in a suburban part of Toronto teeming with children.
It’s time we updated our education funding so it fully recognizes the value of early childhood education, parenting centres, recreation and lifelong learning. It is precisely at this time of crisis that we must strengthen communities, not sell off assets that can be used to better our quality of life in bad times.
Toronto’s “surplus” schools crisis is an opportunity for us to reimagine our city.
Norm Beach is a Toronto District School Board LINC instructor Tam Goossen is a former Toronto public school trustee.
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