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Post by cwhitehead on Oct 9, 2013 22:09:28 GMT -5
After a pleasant two-month break with no meetings this summer, the Near West Working Group re-convened in mid-September with professional facilitators to help us get back on track and moving towards a recommendation to the board for next year. We spent some time discussing the criteria with which we would judge various scenarios, then ascribed varying weights to each criterion. This past Saturday we spent the morning looking at the scenarios that we'd presented to the public in June through the filters of the 7 criteria we'd agreed on and came to the conclusion that scenarios that put EFI at Cambridge just wouldn't work for space reasons and shouldn't be brought forth to the public again. We had earlier eliminated the option to create a new Alternative JK-8 school (by relocating the English program to Fisher Park) since it required a formal ARC and we don't really have time for that. By late Saturday we were left with two options: adding JK-6 EFI to Fisher, drawing from both Elmdale and Devonshire, and Connaught dual-track ENG/ EFI for Devonshire combined with renovating space inside Elmdale, keeping some portables, and moving Elmdale's English program. When pressed, Board staff said that Fisher Park is a better school building for 7/8s than Connaught, so they wouldn't really recommend that one or more programs be moved from Fisher to Connaught to make more space for younger students. In essence, this left us with the original board proposal for Fisher Park: immediately using all available classrooms and quite likely turning the cafeteria into kindergarten rooms. At that point the general consensus in the Working Group was that the only viable option going forward was the Connaught dual-track/ Elmdale rejig & keep portables option.
At Monday's meeting, board planning staff told us that it would be very difficult to create a catchment for Connaught's EFI stream that made any kind of sense and was sustainable. Because there would only be about 160 - 200 EFI student spaces at Connaught, the sample size of students would be small and there could well be wildly varying numbers of kids in each of the eight grades. After they ran the numbers for this, they determined that there would be more cushion room if the 6s from Elmdale, Connaught and Devonshire went to Fisher. Then, for good measure, planning staff ran the numbers to see what would happen if Elmdale and Devonshire instead became JK-3 and Fisher added 4-6 EFI.
At the end of Monday's meeting, the Group agreed to present all these options to the public on October 24th:
A) Fisher Park JK-8 EFI (drawing from eastern Elmdale and western Devonshire) with MFI, ENG, ALT and Gifted EFI 7/8
C1) Elmdale's EFI stays in renovated classrooms and some portables, Elmdale ENG splits to Hilson and Connaught, Fisher Park status quo, Connaught dual-track ENG/ EFI, Devonshire JK-6 with reduced catchment
C2) Same as C1, but moves Grade 6 from these 3 schools to Fisher if necessary
G) Elmdale and Devonshire become JK-3 EFI, Fisher Park becomes 4-8 EFI, other programs status quo
After sleeping on this, I sent an e-mail to the Group asking "what about......" two hybrids. The working group may be meeting next week to think about re-opening the options we're presenting, or it may instead be appropriate to deal with them as a public comment. I won't muddy the waters any more than necessary at this point.
My personal observations:
A) has been fairly unpopular for a year. In addition to worries about security, fenced playgrounds, the suitability of the building and getting the renos done in time for September 2014, quite a few members of the public wrote to the committee to express concerns about air pollution in the school yard since it's very close to the Queensway. Board staff have been in talks with air quality monitoring firms, but haven't started a study yet. We won't have any answers if people ask if the playground is safe. This is not the first choice of anyone on the Working Group. This also leaves Connaught half empty.
C1) appears to be the one solution that most of the Working Group can support. Staff is worried about the catchment, I'm optimistic that we can figure something out.
C2) our Superintendent of Instruction, Susan MacDonald, doesn't like to separate the 6s from the 4s and 5s because of how the curriculum is delivered to Junior students. She also says that staff can make any arrangement work. Elmdale has hated this idea from day 1 and would actually prefer to move 4-6 rather than 6s alone. The majority of the Working Group is comfortable with moving 6's and see it as the lesser of multiple evils when compared to A or G.
G) to me this only makes sense if the K-3 school is right beside the 4-6 school, like Elmdale and Fisher would be. I can't see busing kids from Bronson and Somerset all the way to Fisher, especially because they'd be going past a half-empty Connaught.
Please write your comments and concerns here or send me a personal message. We will know better next week what the format of the public meeting will be and the actual proposed scenarios.
Christopher (and Lil)
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Post by markscrivens on Oct 9, 2013 22:54:21 GMT -5
Thanks Chris,
So the "downside" of C1 is the potential for smaller classes? Is that so bad? Or is the worry that one grade might be over capacity, and that there would be no room for extra classes? I'm not sure I fully understand the Board's concern.
If Connaught is too small, would the Board consider renovating it (since renovating Elmdale seems to be on the table)?
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Post by kellskitchen on Oct 10, 2013 7:12:03 GMT -5
I thought the same thing, Mark. What is the issue with having one class or even split classes of each grade at Connaught? They aren't closing Connaught because of a small English program...
Can you shed any light on what the boundaries may look like? Don't want to light a fuse, but a North-South catchment at Fairmont Avenue makes the most sense for walkability.
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Post by Nicholas Olmstead on Oct 10, 2013 9:28:42 GMT -5
Thanks for the update Chris (and Lil.) Encouraging news.
Kelly - I'm not sure about boundaries but some of the previous maps show a north/south edge at Fairmont and the western edge at Parkdale. That was if Fisher comes into play but if it doesn't, I can see a western edge at Holland instead (or maybe a 'choose your own ending' grey area between Holland/Parkdale). I think Chris is right... Something can be massaged to get the catchment right.
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Post by cwhitehead on Oct 10, 2013 21:44:00 GMT -5
Mark: the concern is that the small number of students would make class sizes unpredictable, and could mean extra classrooms are required. For instance, they've projected a Grade 5 class of 9 at Connaught, SK 18 and the others between 20 and 22, using the boundaries of Parkdale and Fairmont/Pinhey/ Mechanicsville. With FDK, there are no class size caps (since there's usually an ECE with the teacher), but grade 1-3 are capped at 20. Junior there are no caps, so they'd be okay.
The thinking about renos is that Elmdale has never done any reconfiguring of space, so they could use discretionary funds for maintaining older buildings (they had a name for this pot of money, but I've forgotten now). Elmdale has a large lunch room currently only used for the after-school program, they're thinking of moving the library and computer lab to get 2 classrooms .... things Devonshire has already done. In addition there is money from the province for fitting up kindergarten classes for FDK. Presumably the kindergarten fit up money would be available to Connaught depending on the number of kinder rooms they'll need. There are 2 on the ground floor, the floor plans show a third upstairs, and there are 2 purpose-built daycare rooms that they're using for Devonshire's JK kids this year. The Board now has control of that daycare space and has made an application to the Ministry for some sort of daycare program there next year, so the planning staff doesn't want us to consider those 2 daycare rooms as available. Staff have also said that the building isn't yet 20 years old, so it doesn't have the strange scrap space resulting from years of renos that Devonshire or Elmdale would have. So in short, not much money to change Connaught.
We've been pretty strongly encouraged to not hold our breath when it comes to additions. Any change to a footprint of a school has to get capital funding from the province, and the province will say there's space at Fisher and Gowling and Cambridge and say no.
Kelly: These are the boundaries we had the staff try out back in June, just to see if it could be workable. The extra English kids from Elmdale's Civic catchment bring the class usage up to 10, leaving only 8 for SK-6 EFI. Their numbers show it being possible but tight. Staff doesn't like tight or unpredictable.
I'd say the borders need some refining, for instance going west of Parkdale to the current Elmdale EFI border, maybe sending both sides of Fairmont to Connaught and making the border in the middle of a block.... This will need some helpful input from people who know the 'hood better than I do.
Nicholas: planning staff hates "choice" areas, since they compound unpredictability. I think it's perfectly reasonable to let people between Parkdale and Holland have a choice, and also we should give the 70 Elmdale English kids choose which school they go to.
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Post by lplourde on Oct 12, 2013 15:36:03 GMT -5
seems i'll be going against the grain, nothing new there...
given my backyard is right on the Fischer Park schoolyard, i'm all for option A: JK-8 at fischer park, or since my daughter is headed to grade 4, option G.
i would not tend to support a dual track Eng/EFI program, period. Any EFI child presumably already has a solid base in english and is enrolled in EFI for the specific purpose of mastering french. the dual track program simply delutes the use of french outside the classroom and diminishes the effectiveness of the french program - the whole point of having our children in EFI in the first place.
as for air quality, the queensway runs straight through the heart of the entire catchment, so if indeed the air quality is deemed below acceptable levels, the majority of us would be looking at relocating our homes, making that particular argument moot.
as for fencing concerns, the reno required to accomodate the addition of younger students makes putting additional fencing seem nothing more than a minor finishing touch.
i'm just not seeing the cause for concern.
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james
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Post by james on Oct 15, 2013 11:22:14 GMT -5
Thanks Chris and Lil for the hard work. I also appreciate the fact that the working group is really trying to step back from their personal feelings of how this affects their own kids and looking out for the broad interests of the community, which is something all of us should be reminded to do.
I'm wondering if you have an idea of the longer term sustainability of the options? If I remember correctly one of the issues with some of the original Fisher Park options was that they were only very short term solutions before becoming over capacity and requiring that the process start again. If this is the same problem with some of the currently proposed scenarios it might impact on opinions.
For Fisher Park I think that parents should be clearly informed as to what is the actual school property -if fencing is going to be put up and age appropriate play structures to be installed (hopefully) for a JK-8 or 4-8 it may be wise to know how big the yard actually is as it is actually quite small compared to the city park beside it which is not part of the school facility and is not under control of the board. Also for Fisher how much additional parking is required for the additional teachers and how much more of the actual school site will be required to provide the needed parking? Note that the board sprung this on the Glebe community after the major renovations had been agreed to at Mutchmor school -the site parking met city planning requirements but not the board requirements, and so after the fact the board informed the community that it intended to use part of the sports field for parking. Be careful of what you wish for.
Again regarding Fisher I think people do need to be reminded that it is a high school that was repurposed as a 7-8 school. Apparently one of its major benefits over other middle schools to our 7-8's, is that it provides them with a high school like environment which well prepares them for grade 9. On the other hand, board staff are reluctantly saying that Connaught is unsuitable for 7-8, so it would seem the built environments of a elementary jk-6 and a high school are different from the board perspective. Question is what is required to change Fisher to allow for the scenarios with younger elementary children, and is there enough time and budget to not only make it work, but to work well? Will these changes negatively impact on the benefits that the 7-8's currently obtain from the current built environment? What happens if there is a bulge in 7-8 numbers as proportionally it would be significant to the facility in comparison to the proportion of space for other grade levels? For opinion on design issues I would be reluctant to accept opinion from just a board layperson and would want an opinion from a design professional who has familiarity with the built environments in question.
Regarding staff concerns for option C1 catchment I would be interested to know if this from an educational perspective or a bean counting perspective -Susan MacDonald might have some opinion on this. If it is just a bean counting issue, it may be short lived as the city is trying to encourage major intensification in our area. If the issue is low construction costs but high staffing costs, it may actually easier for the board to find money for teachers from its budget than for actual major construction in other scenarios given the proportion of overall board budget the 2 items take up.
Regarding the options it is important to note that our superintendent does not like the idea of splitting the 4-6 from an educational perspective, which in my mind should carry some weight (and would seem to go against opinion of staff bean counters). While she does say that staff can make any scenario work, there is also a big difference between being able to make something work, and making it work well.
Regarding dilution of EFI with dual track or multiple track programs (as is the current situation at Fisher), I would comment that the schoolyard language at Devonshire seems to be English, the communications sent home are English not bilingual, and for any event I've attended at Devonshire they have been at best only partially French with the bilingual component missing when English is used. In short EFI is not as EFI as we might like to believe. I think EFI can be weakened in a dual track program, but by the same token it can be strengthened as well, but it would require that the board make intentional decisions to do so. If we want to go with dual or multiple track programs it think it wise to insist the board make these programs not only work, but work well. Its the details that will make the difference.
Jamie Bruce
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Post by darcie on Oct 15, 2013 19:16:31 GMT -5
Thank you Christopher and Lil for all of the hard work and time that you've devoted to this accomodation review. Thanks especially for this update.
I couldn't support option A for the reasons you've outlined - concerns about security inside and outside the school, especially given that any needed renos are v. unlikely to be complete in 2014 and may in fact be delayed by several years. (As an aside, I do not share the reported concerns about air quality. Given the proximity of our home to the Queensway, I just can't throw stones on that one.)
Options C1 and C2 sound good to me. I think I get the capacity issues at Connaught. With an ENG/EFI split and caps on class size, you could end up with some awkward classroom utilization problems and we should therefore expect split classes in many grades. That's ok by me. I would also support a scenario that saw Grade 6 move to Fisher, though I admit that I know little about the Gr. 6 curriculum.
Incidentally, I went to an ENG/MFI split school as a child and while it was perhaps not ideal from a social perspective (virtually no mixing between students from the two programs), academically-speaking I don't think we 'french kids' suffered at all from the proximity of ENG students/teachers.
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Post by cwhitehead on Oct 21, 2013 22:52:31 GMT -5
James: in A, Fisher does immediately go over their current capacity, but staff says there is space that can be turned into 10 more classrooms (cafeteria, kitchen, etc.) so it won't "really" be overcapacity, just very full.
I should also remind people that the land at Fisher is completely owned by the City of Ottawa, any school use has to be negotiated by the board. The board only owns the building itself. In practice, staff say they have good relations with the City and don't see any problems closing in a kindergarten yard with a fence. By the way, it is only kindergarten yards that must be fenced. There has been no indication that the board would provide any play structures, which is consistent with other schools. I believe that there is now a moratorium on creating new parking spaces at schools in the inner core.
With regard to Connaught: staff took me to task for putting words in their mouths. Connaught meets the basic requirements of a 7/8 school: 2 gym spaces, a room that can store musical instruments, period. When asked if they would recommend that a 7/8 program be moved to Connaught, the answer was that Fisher was a superior space for the 7/8 program, so they would not recommend moving a program from a superior space to another space. It is entirely possible that some of what makes Fisher a superior space now for 7/8 would be lost if JK-6 were added -for instance the commercial kitchen, cafeteria, there is speculation that the woodshop could be turned into classrooms for younger grades. We really don't know, even after a year of discussion.
C1 catchment: as I've said, the concern with a relatively small sample is that they may have to add classes if grades are over capacity. Connaught will have 8 classrooms, enough for one EFI class per grade JK-6, but if there are 26 grade 2s, they'll need to add another homeroom. That's fine at Gowling, where there are 12 extra classes, or at Fisher, because they can carve up the cafeteria or woodshop, but Connaught doesn't have that sort of extra space. The concern is definitely not that the classes at Connaught will be too small to justify their existence, rather that there may be too much demand to fit in the school. Split grades are going to be a reality regardless of the outcome of this review: you just can't get exactly 24 students per grade walking through the door every year.
Thanks everyone for posting and being engaged. It's been an interesting learning experience.
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james
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Post by james on Oct 23, 2013 9:33:48 GMT -5
Chris thanks for the reply. For the board to fence off portions of the city property it may be in for a big fight with the community if it affects the ability for the Community association to operate as many programs as it does -it is already lacking enough field space to provide the programing that the community wants. The Community association has already given the board a heads up that this is the case, so the city may not be in a position to be as compliant as it may typically be in school/city agreements. If yards can be fenced for the kindergarten kids I would not expect play structures as they would interfere with the ability to use the enclosed areas as sports fields for broader community programing.
It does not sound like you were putting words in the staffs mouths -in my opinion meeting the lowest threshold is not a good thing as it is as close to not working as you can get. Within our broader community, which includes Fisher Park, by comparison 7-8 does not work at Connaught program wise and any 7-8's put there would get short changed in my opinion.
For scenario 'A' it sounds like in order to make space they will effectively gut out a lot of the things that makes Fisher a huge benefit for the 7-8's in the community. I do not see a lot of logic in spending money to actually degrade the superior space for our 7-8's in order to create an unsuitable primary space. I say unsuitable since I do not think the board will do anything more than the bare minimum. Face it, if they think fencing and playground structures are a luxury on the outside what are they really going to do on the inside? As a parent just the concept that the board does not require fencing for say a grade one, shows the lack of due diligence that runs through all their decisions.
As far as having split classes unfortunately it seems to be the new reality throughout Ontario due to the hard caps on primary grades. I understand Devonshire was to have splits this year, except the principal went to bat and asked for an exemption given that last year was so disruptive given all that was going on at Devonshire. My understanding for split classes is the driving force is too minimize staffing. You have to combine primary bulges up a year until you can push grade 3's and 4's together making it a junior class exempt from the cap. That's how it worked at Devonshire a few years ago. Having extra unused space to a large extent means nothing if the student numbers are not there to require a full staffing of an additional classroom, and from what you are saying this would be the problem if the numbers would be just over caps for some years.
For parking there is no moratorium as far as I know. Our trustee had asked for one for all schools in the core until the board parking policy is actually finalized, but in the end the trustees voted to only apply it to Devonshire from what I remember.
From what I have seen I would support option 'C' as it seems to make the best use of suitable facilities for the appropriate age groups. I think it will be important for the administration at Connaught to make the effort to make the programs serve us well -parents have the right to ask for and expect that though.
As discloser in 2014-15 I will have a kid in grade 8 at Fisher and another in grade 5 at Devonshire (or potentially elsewhere). In grade 5, I think he would love the sports facilities available at Fisher, but I think he would be overwhelmed by being a small minority in a big 7-8 contingent. If this meant that he would also have less benefits when he is in 7 and 8, I think it would be a bad trade off as I think he would appreciate and benefit from that more in the long run.
Jamie Bruce
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