School board staff shies away from single-building concept

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The news that students in central Scarborough would not be getting a brand new kindergarten to Grade 12 campus was greeted with some disappointment at a public meeting Tuesday evening.

Parents, staff and residents from four schools in the Midland Avenue, Brimley Road, and Lawrence Avenue area who attended the public Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) meeting learned staff would not be recommending a new building be erected on the 38-acre site to house a kindergarten to Grade 12 campus, but rather a "deep retrofit" of two of the existing buildings would be recommended to the board.

"Our conclusion is we need to make the very best use of the buildings that are here," said Peter Gooch at the meeting at Bendale Business and Technical Institute. "What that means is we'll be making serious renovations."

Gooch is the director of strategy, policy and accountability with the Toronto District School Board.

The ARC included Ward 19 Trustee Scott Harrison and representatives from the four affected schools - Bendale BTI, David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, Donwood Park Junior Public School, and Highbrook Learning Centre - as well as from neighbouring Edgewood Public School, the TDSB, and the community.

The committee had recommended, among other things, that Donwood be converted from a JK-Grade 6 to a JK-Grade 8, the BTI model be disbanded at Bendale, and a secondary school with programming appropriate for all post-secondary destinations be established.

Gooch said staff are going to recommend adopting the ARC recommendations except for the construction of a new JK-Grade 12 campus facility.

The board is going to consider the recommendations at its meeting Feb. 4. The board would also decide which of the two secondary buildings would be retrofitted as the new secondary school.

Brenda McNeill is the school council chairperson at Edgewood and a member of the ARC. Her two youngest children will one day attend the renovated high school. She only found out that evening that staff was not recommending a new facility.

"This is news to me and I'm on the ARC," she said.

McNeill said while she was maybe a little disappointed at the news, she is realistic.

"We're shooting for the moon here," she said. "What our responsibility is, is to make sure it's as good as we can get."

She said she still has questions about what a "deep retrofit" would mean.

Sheila Penny, executive superintendent of facilities services for the TDSB, said a deep retrofit process begins with understanding the programs that would be delivered in the school in order to determine what would be physically needed in the building to deliver them, and then the current condition of the facilities would be examined to see what is working and what needs to be demolished or improved.

"It has the look and feel of a new facility," she said.

Diane Wilson-Sweet shared McNeill's feelings. She is the school council chairperson at David and Mary Thomson Collegiate and a member of ARC.

"We always ask for the ideal and if you even get half of what you ask for you're still ahead," she said. "If they're going to do the renovations well and still make it a good education experience, then that's the important thing,"

While she said it would be wonderful to have a new building she understands the financial limitations of the board and believes the renovated buildings will serve the needs of students.

"I really do have confidence in the people who've been assigned to (the design) task," Wilson-Sweet said.

Naseema Khan said the unexpected news has several parents she's spoken with worried.

"Parents were a bit concerned, a bit shocked," she said.

Khan is the school council chairperson at Donwood Park JPS and a member of the ARC.

"I was a little surprised at first," she said. "I can understand where they're coming from."

As for moving away from the kindergarten to Grade 12 campus as recommended by the ARC, Wilson-Sweet said originally the Thomson representatives were wary of that idea.

"We actually got what we wanted...It would have been fine either way," she said.

Khan agreed it wouldn't be an issue that staff was not going to recommend one campus.

"That's good in a way, I knew some parents (were concerned)," she said.

Penny assured those in attendance at the meeting there would be plenty of opportunity going forward for the public to be involved in the deep retrofit process, if the board approved the recommendation from staff.

Construction would likely not be completed for up to five years.

The ARC process was initiated by Harrison (who was unable to attend Tuesday's meeting) because he felt the schools, which are about 50 years old, were not properly serving students. He felt they were out of date in many ways and Donwood is overflowing.