Re-evaluating school values

The best thing about Education Minister Kathleen Wynne’s announcement at Oscar Peterson Public School in Mississauga yesterday wasn’t what she announced — $1 billion for 100 new schools and revised guidelines for school closings — but the tone she used in announcing it.
Wynne, who already looks very comfortable in a job she is obviously better suited for than her two short-lived predecessors, didn’t seem the least bit doctrinaire in her attitude towards closing schools or combining them with community resources such as libraries or child care centres.
After touring some of the classes in the Churchill Meadows school, which concentrates on the arts and has not one, but two, real live music teachers (and you thought they were an endangered species) Wynne began her press conference with what sounded like a contradiction.
Yes, the media had been invited out so the ministry could showcase the beautiful state-of-the-art building as an example of the investment the government has made in new schools.
“But, as you saw in that Grade 1 class we visited,” said the minister, “what’s really important is the jokes, the teachers and the relationships that develop in classes.” Spoken like a former kindergarten teacher.
A building is just bricks and mortar but a school is the collective effect of dynamic collaboration among staff, students and the community.
You can name any school for Oscar Peterson but it’s only meaningful if people like Principal Caroline Mochrie assemble a talented staff and then execute their vision for an outstanding elementary arts curriculum.
The most important thing the minister said is that she wants to turn schools into “hubs.” And when the time comes to close a school, before that decision is taken a full review of its value — not just to the board but to the larger community — must be completed.
She understands that schools don’t belong to boards of education or governments. They belong to neighbourhoods. In some cases, they may be severely under-enrolled but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be the centre of community activity, especially if they are the only remaining public building within miles.
Those words were music to the ears of Director of Education (and part-time drummer) Jim Grieve of the Peel District School Board.
Under current regulations, boards are punished for every square inch of space that isn’t used for purely instructional purposes. Space used for a community library or child care counts as empty and, as a result, boards lose dollars they desperately need under the formula to build new schools in growth areas.
The minister’s flexibility should open the door to more of the wonderful literacy and numeracy programs that prepare students in high-risk communities for school, such as Success by 6 and the Early Years and reading readiness centres. Those programs will repay their investment many times over down the road in costs that are avoided because students won’t have to use reading recovery and other expensive remedial programs.
Viewing schools as community assets has other long-range benefits, pointed out Mississauga West MPP Bob Delaney. “Within a generation, for every one senior citizen we have in Mississauga now, there will be two and for every one person now over 80 years, there will be three. We have the buildings and the land. Those buildings could be useful as community centres or older adult centres.”
Puts a new spin on the whole concept of local life-long learning, n’est-ce pas?