Small-high school seminar

So the small-high school seminar I attended this week ended Tuesday afternoon and my brain is swimming in the things I've witnessed and discussed since Sunday. I will be going through my copious notes and drafting some posts to put up here as a result of attending this conference, as I doubt I would be given the space to write about the past three days in print.
As a sneak peek, I'd like to give you an idea of what we did and where we went here in sunny San Diego, thanks to the Education Writers Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-- one of the main movers and shakers in the small-school movement in the U.S.

• Sunday was all about panels-- we heard perspectives from New York, Chicago and San Diego / L.A. from experts and researchers on how small high schools have been setup and what it is about them that works. We had some divergent opinions amongst our various panelists that I'll get into in subsequent posts.
• Monday we travelled to Kearney High School campus, a public school in the San Diego Unified School District. The high school is one of three formerly "large" schools whose campuses were modified and now contains four "small schools" within the same physical space, a campus that houses approximately 2,000 students. We spent time in the School of International Business and the Construction Tech Academy.
• Monday afternoon, we travelled to Lincoln High School, a large urban high school which closed for five years and then was re-opened four school years ago. It remains one large 2,400-student school administratively, but contains for small "learning community" campuses. All Grade 9s enter a social justice program, and then in Grade 10 attend one of three other campuses-- science and technology, arts or public safety.
• Tuesday, we spent the morning and early afternoon at High Tech High, a publicly funded charter school located on former naval lands. The school has a mix of public and private-foundation funding, and contains three "small" high schools-- the original High Tech High, High Tech High International and High Tech High Media Arts. The campus we visited also contains a middle and elementary school campus.

For future purposes, the terminology here of "small" refers to schools of between 400-600 students per campus / administrative school division. We didn't actually visit a school campus where there was one standalone facility with 400-600 students, or, even, fewer than 400 students.
More on these schools and the sessions in the coming days as I review my notes and think of how to frame some posts. I did take some photos and even one video, which I'll embed as appropriate.

Hiatus

One of the more frustrating things in life the last month or so has been the sheer and utter lack of time to post on as many things as I'd like to in this space. In the past week alone, I've had browser tabs open for a new K-12 school in Pembroke, a new homework policy unveiled by the Simcoe County District School Board and the continuing saga that is unfolding in Niagara-on-the-Lake-- where attributing devilish qualities and asking DSBN to "stay away," has become the new form of municipal-school board co-operation so heralded by the town's own council members on the Community Schools Alliance. I wonder if the other members of the alliance executive will follow this grand path of adding insult to injury after a board makes a disputed decision. Not to mention Studio2's time this week on early learning featuring Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, which I didn't have time to see yet would have liked to blog about here.
All things I wish I'd had more time for but haven't as most of my work blogging time has concentrated on my municipal politics blog, leaving precious little personal time for this space.

Anyway.

The blog is going on a short hiatus until at least Nov. 12.
I successfully applied for and received a fellowship to attend an Education Writers Association seminar in San Diego, Cal., titled "Small Schools and High School Reform: Shrinking Size, Diminishing Returns?" I am grateful for the opportunity and rather excited to spend two days in the company of about a dozen U.S. education reporters talking about small-school models and why they do and don't work and how to cover them as a journalist.
Some of the insight I gain will hopefully show itself through posts in this space as well as in my reporting through my full-time gig.
It does mean no posts for the coming days however. I may be able to tweet from a few of the venues, but won't make any guarantees.
Please check back after Nov. 12 for new posts.

Bill 177 committee stuff available

Just a quick post to indicate the transcripts from the Ontario Legislature's standing committee on social policy's two days of hearings on Bill 177 are up on the legislature's website. I had wanted to wait a few days after the Oct. 26 and 27 meeting dates because usually it takes a few days for the committee staff to post the Hansard transcripts of the hearings at the committee level.
Looking quickly at those who spoke, it drew the expected crowd of trustees' association, trustees, parents' groups and other interested parties.
The Oct. 26 transcript is here— HTML or PDF, with the Oct. 27 transcript here— HTML or PDF.
I have not had time to read through the transcripts, but did note the committee will do clause-by-clause examination of Bill 177 on Nov. 16. A few days afterward I will again post a couple hundred words with a link to the transcript.

Getting into Toronto ARCs

A frequent if anonymous tipster passed this along earlier today-- it ran in a weekly in the GTA, and is also posted at the Campaign for Public Education's website. Haven't heard of the CPE? Its member organizations are listed here. From a quick scan of the site, it appears the CPE has been somewhat dormant of late-- its blog has only two posts from within the past year. Its media contact list for the GTA contains several incorrect names. For example, Tess Kalinowski hasn't been the education reporter at the Star for... almost two years? If not longer.
Having said all that, the CPE is obviously choosing to wade into the eight reviews launched in the Toronto District School Board. From the ad:

The TDSB’s public consultation meetings downplay the negative impact of school closure on  students, adult learners and the community as a whole. The meetings are designed to limit discussion of the benefits of keeping existing schools open and finding ways to improve them.
To pave the way for closing schools with low enrolment, the TDSB is pushing mega-schools — despite decades of positive experience with smaller schools.

This ad only shows the CPE's own misunderstanding of the accommodation review process and how it's supposed to work. It presumes the best interests of Toronto and all its students is to keep every building open forever, with the fiscal backing to invest in all of them. It also neglects to tell you that Toronto's decades of experience with small schools happened because the city had the richest corporate, industrial and commercial assessment base in the province. A taxed assessment which was to the Toronto (public) boards' sole benefit until 1998, and allowed it to have facilities, school sizes and programs assessment-poorer parts of the province could only dream about. Since 1998, these dozens of schools maintained by the TDSB that fall outside the funding formula have been sustained by year after year of provincial subsidy above and beyond what other boards were able to get, given by successive governments too afraid to tackle the behemoth of a board the government of the day created.
There are tough choices to be made in Toronto. Kudos to the CPE for stepping forward and adding its voice to the fray-- its opinions need to be heard.
However, its input would be most productive if it quickly learns to abandon the status quo, become a real contributor to review committee work (not just complain and lob insults from the sidelines) and contributes the options and solutions it claims won't be developed for consideration by trustees.
If this first ad is any indication, I don't think we'll see that from the CPE. It's unfortunate.

MacDonald on T.O. reviews

TorSun's Moira MacDonald weighs in on the Toronto District School Board reviews today, with a cleverly titled opinion piece. She provides several hypotheses on what is behind the selection of the 25 schools and eight review committees now struck at the board.

Why were these eight areas -- encompassing 35 schools -- chosen for the first round? Number one: trustee buy-in.
"The (trustees) around the table were the people who were willing to engage in the process," trustee Howard Goodman told me, adding this would not have included trustees "philosophically deadset against closing schools." The old city of Toronto is noticeably underrepresented while outer reaches of the city -- like Scarborough -- are overrepresented. Also absent are schools with some of the lowest enrolments going.
Reason number two for why these schools first: Community interest.
Scarborough trustee Scott Harrison told me Cedarbrook Junior Public School was a school "I was pushing (for a review) because the community wanted it." Cedarbrook only goes up to Grade 6 and is just over half full. Parents would like to see their children staying at the school until Grade 8. That cuts down on the number of school changes kids have to make during their school career. It also adds more kids, good if enrolment is falling -- and is the model the TDSB wants across the city.

In addition, MacDonald mentions bums-in-seats / enrolment as well as facility reasons in the final graphs of the column.
Perhaps my comment on an earlier post will be proven wrong and we'll see some enlightened reporting, opinion and analysis from T.O. media on the reviews as they get underway and chew through the process. MacDonald's piece today certainly is a nice addition.

Toronto ARC coverage ramps up

Caught this in a news alert earlier this week, regarding the various school communities in the Toronto District School Board getting ready for the accommodation reviews that are about to begin looking at the future of 37 schools in the city. The Globe and Mail posted this Monday, accompanied by an opinion piece by Marcus Gee.
As I've posted here before, it's about freakin' time Toronto starts looking at its enrolment v. capacity. It continues to have the highest percentage of empty space in its schools in all of Ontario, but has been coddled over the years as its trustees refused to engage the issue. From the article:

Don Higgins, TDSB executive officer of business services, says the board is faced with few financial alternatives: As enrolment drops and per-child funding sinks with it, the board finds itself covering the pricey operating cost of its facilities by slicing other budget areas.

“People will argue a small school is a good school but it's just sheer numbers. The ministry could open the funding model and start funding on a more expansive basis, but that's not going to happen.”

Junior/Senior Kindergarten class at Diefenbaker Elementary School in Toronto.

The TDSB has long been cited as the city's largest property-holder, and if it does choose to close schools, selling the property they stand on could be extremely lucrative.
School closures are sometimes a necessary evil, says Annie Kidder, executive director of the People for Education advocacy group. But they're often indicative of skewed funding formulas more than a decade out of date with student needs.
“There's a possibility that some of the schools that are going to close over the next couple of years maybe could have stayed open if we didn't have this disconnect.”

This will be, as I've said before, instructive. Toronto communities will start to experience what the rest of the province has spent the last two school years living, and the rest of us will be reminded that small and rural schools don't have an exclusive claim to the community that exists in every school. Every school closure, regardless of size, location, urban/rural etc. is one that affects communities-- the key is ensuring the positives of closure, consolidation, renovation, expansion and modernization outweigh the costs of closure.
This could be a real opportunity for the TDSB and its communities to begin revitalizing their facilities and programs and bring as many school learning environments as possible into this century. Let's hope that goal remains in sight.

All options expire for NDSS

I've been delinquent in posting here this week for a variety of reasons I won't spend a lot of time discussing. There are only so many hours in a day.
However, Oct. 30 was the calendar date by which Niagara District Secondary School in Niagara-on-the-Lake needed to have 350 registered pupils in order to avoid closure at the end of the 2009-10 year. Tiffany Mayer has been on the NDSS story at the St. Catharines Standard since the departure of Samantha Craggs last December, and published a fantastic article Saturday. This is extraordinarily good reporting from Mayer, showing the depth and context that only good newspaper journalism can do. She covered all the bases, speaking to trustees (for and against allowing the June 2008 motion to stand), community activists, the Lord Mayor and even students at NDSS.

But (District School Board of Niagara) education director Warren Hoshizaki said the board did what it could for the beleaguered secondary school.
"Because the results were not as they would have liked -- as we would have liked -- I think we forget how much work that (superintendent) John Stainsby and the transition committee have really done to try to boost the enrolment in that school. We worked a long time with them," Hoshizaki said.
There were also brainstorming sessions between trustees and town councillors to find solutions.An international baccalaureate program, golf academy, football and agriculture courses were added or were in the works when NDSS's last lifeline ran out this week. None were able to produce results in time for today, though many lobbied for an enrolment target deadline extension to give them a chance to flourish.
The odds just weren't in NDSS's favour, Hoshizaki noted.
Half of Grade 8 students in the community opt to go elsewhere for high school -- an anomaly, he said.
So is this really it for NDSS?
"Yup," trustee Dalton Clark said, even before the question was out. "I think we have to move on and start giving kids a quality eduction."
Often accused by NDSS supporters of being the ring leader of trustees who voted to spike any chance of NDSS's survival, Clark's conviction isn't necessarily arbitrary.
The board's projected enrolment for the next five years paints a grim picture. NDSS is expected to have only 203 students by 2014 -- not enough to offer a solid range of programming, the board maintains.
At the moment, the town's elementary schools have 276 students in junior kindergarten to Grade 2. Come high school, they would be divided up between NDSS, the Catholic board and Eden, board spokesman Brett Sweeney said.
Had the new program additions shown any sign of boosting the population, Clark said he would have considered that.
"I just based my vote on the fact that, in spite of all of the efforts of the community and the fact that courtesy busing has been taken away, that the enrolment dropped anyway. I don't see any way the school could ever get back to being a viable operation," Clark said. "And in the meantime, every year that we put it off, 200-plus kids are underserved by our board."

The key figure there? The JK-2 student population in the catchment area. The first of those students is only six years away from Grade 9, and if they follow the pattern of current Grade 8 students, not enough of them will choose NDSS to keep the programs and facility viable. The comment section at the end of the story says it right, when the poster indicates all the families and parents who chose other schools over NDSS over the past decade share responsibility in this outcome as well. It's an important point that shouldn't be forgotten.
The community should be commended for its efforts. Now it needs to focus on continuing to participate in the discussions between now and September 2010. It needs to keep playing a part in ensuring its students are welcomed in their receiving schools and that the program and facility advantages they couldn't access at NDSS exist for them elsewhere.
However, this and other similar-population high schools should take note. Don't wait for the accommodation review to begin to start working on program options and other enticements to boost student enrolment at your school. If you're an English-language, public high school in southern Ontario and your student population in Grades 9-12 is nearing between 300 and 400 students, it's time to start working on those things now. Not tomorrow, not next year. Now. Now's the time to start talking to the local municipality and other public-sector groups who might be able to lease vacant space in the facility. Now's the time to start searching for partnership opportunities that can enhance programming and facility at the school.
If you choose to wait for another day, it might be too late.