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Elgin Street Public School is the latest headache for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board as it struggles with overcrowding in its downtown elementary schools.
In public meetings this month, the board is working through changes to the Centretown school’s boundaries. It wants to move some to Centennial Public School to the northwest, some to Viscount Alexander Public School at the south edge of Sandy Hill, and a few to Hopewell Avenue Public School in Old Ottawa South.
That’s a stopgap, though: Although the other three schools have room now, by 2020, according to the board’s projections, all four will be overstuffed.
Elgin Street’s a small school, with room for 250 students. Last year, it had 310. According to the board, 25 extra kids showed up for junior kindergarten in 2014, nearly doubling the usual number of 30. That happens sometimes and it’s usually temporary. The board added portables.
This year, those extra kids went into senior kindergarten, and then an extra 32 junior kindergarteners showed up. Uh-oh, the board’s planners said.
Fifteen years ago, Elgin Street P.S. was one of several schools the board was planning to close. A conservative provincial government was squeezing school budgets, Elgin Street was underused and it was a natural target. An election intervened, though, and new activist trustees saved it. Now it has portables.
Mutchmor in the Glebe (where, full disclosure, my kids go) has a major new addition. Elmdale in Hampton Park is at 120-per-cent capacity. Devonshire in Hintonburg is almost full. All of them were saved from the executioner. Parent activists at the time argued that the board’s projections weren’t accounting for families’ staying downtown and they were right.
Provincial education policies have increased demand for elementary-school space, too: full-day kindergarten doubles the number of kindergarten classrooms a school needs and caps on class sizes can require an extra classroom or two even in a small school. In Ottawa, there’s also been a slow but very major shift toward French immersion, upending the balance of English and French classes.
But once you account for all this, there’s no obvious reason for this “anomalous” influx at Elgin Street, according to the school board. No particular new development has filled up. The kindergarteners are evenly spread around the neighbourhoods Elgin Street serves. There’s no big transfer from other schools. There are just … more students.
“Historical migration data for Centretown typically shows a significant movement of pre-school population out of the area prior to children entering their school age years,” the board’s report on its Elgin Street plans says. “This trend may be changing.”
Since this has been explicit city policy for over a decade now, that does seem to make sense. Condo towers get all the ink, but downtown has seen low-rises fill in empty corners, big houses replaced with semis and triplexes, small townhouse complexes take up parking lots.
“We are seeing families either returning or replacing. We started to see some of that in Hintonburg, Westboro a few years ago. Some of that is happening in Centretown and Old Ottawa South. We’re trying to see how much of that will continue,” said Michael Carson, who’s the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s chief financial officer and in charge of facilities and planning.
School boards, constrained by provincial policies and funding formulas, are not good at getting out ahead of demand for space. Major capital projects usually need special funding from the government. Worse, the need for space is coming up in neighbourhoods where property isn’t cheap, precisely because of the new developments creating the board’s headaches. So as much as the board could use the money from some land sales, property can be even more precious kept in the board’s hands.
“We have insisted on maintaining some flexibility,” Carson said. “Regardless of (conditions) this year or next year, things change.”
The former McNabb Park Public School at Bronson and Gladstone, for instance, now houses an underfilled alternative program. Dealings with the education ministry, which always wants buildings either full or gone, would be easier if the board got rid of it. But although there’s no specific plan for this, Carson said he suspects it’ll one day be a full-blown elementary school again.
That’s one piece of a solution to a very serious, very expensive problem.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
In public meetings this month, the board is working through changes to the Centretown school’s boundaries. It wants to move some to Centennial Public School to the northwest, some to Viscount Alexander Public School at the south edge of Sandy Hill, and a few to Hopewell Avenue Public School in Old Ottawa South.
That’s a stopgap, though: Although the other three schools have room now, by 2020, according to the board’s projections, all four will be overstuffed.
Elgin Street’s a small school, with room for 250 students. Last year, it had 310. According to the board, 25 extra kids showed up for junior kindergarten in 2014, nearly doubling the usual number of 30. That happens sometimes and it’s usually temporary. The board added portables.
This year, those extra kids went into senior kindergarten, and then an extra 32 junior kindergarteners showed up. Uh-oh, the board’s planners said.
Fifteen years ago, Elgin Street P.S. was one of several schools the board was planning to close. A conservative provincial government was squeezing school budgets, Elgin Street was underused and it was a natural target. An election intervened, though, and new activist trustees saved it. Now it has portables.
Mutchmor in the Glebe (where, full disclosure, my kids go) has a major new addition. Elmdale in Hampton Park is at 120-per-cent capacity. Devonshire in Hintonburg is almost full. All of them were saved from the executioner. Parent activists at the time argued that the board’s projections weren’t accounting for families’ staying downtown and they were right.
Provincial education policies have increased demand for elementary-school space, too: full-day kindergarten doubles the number of kindergarten classrooms a school needs and caps on class sizes can require an extra classroom or two even in a small school. In Ottawa, there’s also been a slow but very major shift toward French immersion, upending the balance of English and French classes.
But once you account for all this, there’s no obvious reason for this “anomalous” influx at Elgin Street, according to the school board. No particular new development has filled up. The kindergarteners are evenly spread around the neighbourhoods Elgin Street serves. There’s no big transfer from other schools. There are just … more students.
“Historical migration data for Centretown typically shows a significant movement of pre-school population out of the area prior to children entering their school age years,” the board’s report on its Elgin Street plans says. “This trend may be changing.”
Since this has been explicit city policy for over a decade now, that does seem to make sense. Condo towers get all the ink, but downtown has seen low-rises fill in empty corners, big houses replaced with semis and triplexes, small townhouse complexes take up parking lots.
“We are seeing families either returning or replacing. We started to see some of that in Hintonburg, Westboro a few years ago. Some of that is happening in Centretown and Old Ottawa South. We’re trying to see how much of that will continue,” said Michael Carson, who’s the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s chief financial officer and in charge of facilities and planning.
School boards, constrained by provincial policies and funding formulas, are not good at getting out ahead of demand for space. Major capital projects usually need special funding from the government. Worse, the need for space is coming up in neighbourhoods where property isn’t cheap, precisely because of the new developments creating the board’s headaches. So as much as the board could use the money from some land sales, property can be even more precious kept in the board’s hands.
“We have insisted on maintaining some flexibility,” Carson said. “Regardless of (conditions) this year or next year, things change.”
The former McNabb Park Public School at Bronson and Gladstone, for instance, now houses an underfilled alternative program. Dealings with the education ministry, which always wants buildings either full or gone, would be easier if the board got rid of it. But although there’s no specific plan for this, Carson said he suspects it’ll one day be a full-blown elementary school again.
That’s one piece of a solution to a very serious, very expensive problem.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
