Re-Purposing inner & almost inner-city schools

[speedog]

Thought that this might be worthy of a thread of it's own after seeing some debate about re-purposing inner & almost inner-city schools in the "Calgary Construction XXI" thread.

Anyhow, our family has owned a home for 16+ years in one of these older communities (Highwood - mid-50's) where we have seen first hand the re-purposing of underutilized schools. When we bought our home here in 1996, our small community had a public K-6 school (80% French immersion/20% English), a public grade 7-9 junior high and an already re-purposed Catholic school. Over the past 16 years, we've seen the re-purposed Catholic school morph several times while the public K-6 school had it's English program shut down at the request of the parents of the attending English students (kids were transferred to Cambrian Heights public K-6) resulting in a 100% french immersion K-6 school which which was eventually shut down and in it's place we now have a Mandarin immersion K-6 program.

Personally, I believe that our small community was vastly overbuilt when it came to schooling but then again, who knows what planners thought back then. As far as re-purposing schools, it does create problems that most wouldn't be aware of - when the CBE looked at shutting down the 20% English program at Highwood Elementary some 10+ years ago, there was a committee formed and the end result was a first whereas the affected parents/families recommended shutting down the program instead of saving it as providing satisfactory education to the 20% English split was difficult when a school was only allotted so many teaching resources and the 20/80 split hurt the English program when it come to divvying up those resources.

So move ahead a few years and the French immersion program was eventually moved much to the opposition of the attending student's parents/families even though 95%+ of them didn't reside within the community. In it's place was placed a Mandarin Immersion program with 95% plus of the students coming from outside the community and this too is creating problems within the community which I'll detail next.

The problems of re-purposed schools - I would've never seen this but a year after the aforementioned English program was moved I happened to be walking by the Highwood Elementary school one morning and stopped to speak to the principal who was outside and asked how things were going since the English kids moved. What was surprising is that she said things were not going well as extra-curricular activities at the school which relied upon students and parent volunteers were proving difficult to manage. I asked why and she said that in the past most of the volunteer base was from students and parents who lived within the community that the scholl was located in and with a French only population which was 95%+ from outside of the community, they were getting virtually no volunteers and in fact, they were relying upon volunteers from within the community who did not even have children at that school. Fast forward to the Mandarin immersion program and the same situation is still occurring except that community volunteers are now not involved because of language barriers.

A second problem - traffic and parking. These re-purposed schools that bring the bulk of their student population from outside the community bring with them major increased traffic and parking issues - we have seen first hand a marked increase in personal school time traffic, both in personal vehicles and buses. One problem it creates is that these schools and communities were designed with the fact that most students walked to school and now with several hundred students being bussed or driven to school, the narrow streets just can not accommodate the increase traffic. At the Mandarin immersion school, we have gone from 6 to 19 busses and even more amazing is the sheer number of students being driven to/from school despite the available busing. We have seen, as a result, increased collisions in our community, parents parking where they please including in front of driveways, garages and even in driveways, double and triple parking and short-cutting/speeding through alleys - mu daughter two years ago when she was 11 had to jump off of the sidewalk she was walking on in order to avoid being run over by a Mandarin student parent who was driving on the sidewalk. Yeah, complaints to the city/alderman/police help in the short term, but the problem always resurfaces.

Third, community involvement and being good neighbors - our community's experience is that these re-purposed schools just don't make good neighbors. The administration of these re-purposed schools have made little to no effort to be good community neighbors - the original K-6 public and separate school were quite involved with the community, but now there is no involvement even though the community association and senior groups have reached out to them. Why - probably comes back to the fact the 95%+ of the students come from outside of the community and the administration sees no reason to keep a connection in place to the community. Additionally, the Mandarin program parents wanted to rent our community hall for a before/after school care program (didn't happen) despite the fact that they still owe our community monies from previous year's rentals - being a good neighbor includes paying bills on-time.

So what's the solution? My proposal would be to bulldoze some of these schools - I'd rather see some new, more dense housing in our community as opposed to the problems that these re-purposed schools are creating. People that would own homes in our community and contribute to our community as opposed to people that just drive their kids to/from school who then get upset because they're stuck in traffic jams on our community's narrow streets. Now I realize that there is a new breed of parent out there that fully believes that having a child in a special program school (immersion, charter/whatever) is the way to go, but let's seriously study where to place these programs - when 95%+ of a school's population comes from outside a community there has got to be a better way.

[93JC]

If you demolish the schools then where do the kids of the people who move into this new high-density development go?

The situation is multi-faceted and frankly I'm not sure if there is a good solution. People with kids don't live where schools are, they live in the 'burbs. They do so mostly because housing, on a $/sq ft basis, is much more affordable there. Inner city communities are slowly being infilled with 'luxury' housing which families cannot afford or don't want, so you end up with inner city communities being filled with old people who have been there forever and DINKs. That won't always be the case, it'll slowly swing back the other way to families, so if you demolish the schools then a generation from now you'll have inner city parents ranting and raving about having no schools in the area.

[speedog]

Problem is that a community like Highwood that only has around 1,000 homes and 2,200 people doesn't currently or never will have the need for two K-6 school and one junior high school even if you through in a high density development that might bring in a couple hundred more people. It was overbuilt with schools way back in the 60's and even if you doubled the current density of the whole community, one K-6 school and the junior high would still be adequate - two K-6 is overkill.

[93JC]

Which one is the other K-6 school? I'm looking at a map and the only one I see is Highwood Elementary. Unless you're also counting that charter school across the street from Colonel Irvine.

[speedog]

Charter school north of Highwood Elementary (Foundations for the Future Charter school and funded by public school tax dollars) was originally a Catholic K-6 school and I believe is still owned by the Catholic school board. Colonel Irvine is west of Highwood Elementary.

Of note, current CBE proposal is to move grades 5-6 Mandarin bilingual to Colonel Irvine and further expand the K-4 Mandarin bilingual program at Highwood with a request for more portables - some Mandarin parents have proposed that the regular and TLC programs at Colonel Irvine be moved elsewhere to accommodate them. This will mean even more "out of community" parent traffic and more busing issues - what I fail to understand is the need for some many of these parents to drive their children to/from school when busing is available, a growing issue that the city and province is now grappling with.

It is even to the point that parents are now requesting that special parking areas/lots be created to accommodate them and their parking/travel needs when transporting their children to/from school - another great example of the growing traffic issues near schools would be the CBE's Evergreen Elementary school in deep SW Calgary, just another gong show every morning and afternoon with multitudes of parents driving their kids to/from school.

[93JC]

I'm not really clear as to what your proposed solution (demolish schools) will do to solve the problems you have identified.

Your argument seems to be that the neighbourhood was supplied with too much school capacity in the first place. I don't mean to offend you when I say I am almost completely certain that you're dead wrong, and the reason it was built with so many schools was because demand was there. School boards don't have money to build "too many" schools, they never did.

Like I said, the problem is demographics in the neighbourhood and surrounding neighbourhoods have changed. You might ask or argue "Well why didn't the school boards anticipate this?" I'm sure they did, but at the time they didn't have much choice.

Now you're saying they should demolish a school mostly because the student body isn't local to the neighbourhood, and that causes 'problems' in the neighbourhood like more non-local traffic and relatively disinterested non-local parents who don't support extra-curricular programs and neighbourhood programs like the local parents once did. I don't disagree that it's too bad that the new parents don't take an interest in the neighbourhood and the activities outside of school hours like the old parents used to but your proposed solution is simply to make them go somewhere else. They will either become some other neighbourhood's 'problem' or they will need schools built in their own neighbourhoods. In the first case you're not solving the 'problem', just moving it out of your neighbourhood, and the second case just isn't practical because quite frankly we (society) don't have the money for it.

I went through French Immersion, and out of curiosity I checked the CBE site to see what the school track would be now for a kid who grows up where I did. My elementary school was William Reid, in Elbow Park. It was a K-6 school when I went there and we had very small class sizes. I only had 18-20 kids in my class in any given year. It's now a K-4 school with 200 students (avg. of 40 per grade). I don't know if that's because the French Immersion program itself has become more popular in the southwest inner city (it's the designated school for all kids going into French Immersion from Downtown to Altadore, Inglewood and Meadowlark Park) or whether the demographics in the area have changed (more kids, period). Either way the school is being used more heavily than when I was there, and yet when I was going there it was arguably under-utilized and if anything all signs pointed to the school being closed by now. The school is in Elbow Park: of all my classmates I had three who actually lived in Elbow Park. About half lived in Mount Royal, a few lived in Altadore and a couple lived in North Glenmore. Many kids were driven to school every day (I was).

Would it have been better for the community if that school was razed and the students were shunted elsewhere? Maybe, but it would have looked very shortsighted here and now, a couple decades later.

It's inevitable that closing a school might become the only option. There was in fact once upon a time a Catholic school across the school yard from William Reid: St. Patrick School. It was vacant when I went to William Reid. Actually the CBE leased it and we walked across the field to use their gymnasium; we didn't have one of our own. William Reid has since expanded and added a gym, and St. Patrick's was demolished.

Would it have been better if St. Patrick's was kept open? Maybe, maybe not. It looked kind of stupid back then to have ever built it.



I guess where I'm going with all of this is that neighbourhoods change over time and so too do their schools, and the only thing I can tell you for certain is that this city keeps growing and the demand for schools keeps growing with it. Demolishing one school will require building another, somewhere. It's hard enough for our school boards to find the money to build new schools to meet new demand, let alone to fund building new schools to completely replace old ones. That's a lot of money to be spent. A hell of a lot of money. What would be best is if the old schools kept the save level of local enrolment as they did when they were built but that's just not going to happen. It would require empty-nesters to move out and new families to move in on a consistent basis, and that's not going to happen because empty-nesters don't necessarily want to leave their old neighbourhood and young families can't necessarily afford to move in to the old neighbourhood.

What we absolutely cannot do is tear down old schools and build new schools to keep up with the demographic shifts of our old and new neighbourhoods. We couldn't possibly build the schools fast enough and we couldn't afford to even if we really wanted to.

[speedog]

So what is the solution? Continue to build schools in new communities to keep the voters in those areas happy and at the same time, keep every old school open as well? I believe there are situations where the removal of an old school and repurposing that land might be in the best interests of the taxpayer - maintenance and upkeep on an old school can be a very costly endeavour in the hopes that there might be enough school aged kids in the future to fully utilize that school. And besides all of the above, what of the multitudes of parents who are so against the busing of their kids - only more new schools will really address those concerns. Finally another possible little twist - the very real possibility of a growing inner-city population with school aged kids, how will we properly accommodate them as there certainly very few schools in the belt line and once again, the whole busing issue will come to ahead again.

[Innersoul1]

You make a very good point with the challenges of repurposed schools. St. Joseph in Mt. Pleasant is an example of this as it was changed from a K-9 to a dual track year round school. We have students who come to our school from as far as Kincora. In most instances parents drive these kids to school. It's hard to get parent volunteers and it often has an effect on our athletics programs. We really notice it with athletic events after school when our teams play to a mostly empty gym as kids live so far away and need to get rides home or take bus trips with multiple,e transfers.

[93JC]

Originally Posted by speedog

So what is the solution? Continue to build schools in new communities to keep the voters in those areas happy and at the same time, keep every old school open as well?

Like I said if we don't keep the old schools open then we'll end up having to build a new school somewhere to replace it.

I believe there are situations where the removal of an old school and repurposing that land might be in the best interests of the taxpayer - maintenance and upkeep on an old school can be a very costly endeavour in the hopes that there might be enough school aged kids in the future to fully utilize that school.

That is true, there are definitely cases where keeping the old school running is less cost effective than closing it, demolishing it, and replacing it somewhere else. It's the same with every other building: commercial, industrial, residential, you name it.

But the problems you have identified are not a result of not enough school aged kids to fully utilize the school. In fact it seems to be the complete opposite: they are being fully utilized. It just so happens that you don't particularly like the way the optimization of space is being done: shuttling kids in from other neighbourhoods to fill in the spots that local kids aren't occupying anymore, and the resulting influx of apathetic non-local parents and all the 'trouble' they bring (lots more vehicular traffic, decreased participation in extra-curricular activities, decreased community involvement, etc.).

And besides all of the above, what of the multitudes of parents who are so against the busing of their kids - only more new schools will really address those concerns.

That's a greater issue. We build suburban neighbourhoods, developers promise the moon (i.e. they'll leave space for a school to be built and use the promise of a future school to entice families to move out there), and the school boards are left holding the bag and get blamed for dragging their feet and not building schools quickly enough.

At some point I think the end-game of all of this is that suburban neighbourhoods will just stop getting new schools, and people will just have to deal with and accept having their kids bused to school. Don't like it? Don't move to a neighbourhood without a school.

Finally another possible little twist - the very real possibility of a growing inner-city population with school aged kids, how will we properly accommodate them as there certainly very few schools in the belt line and once again, the whole busing issue will come to ahead again.

All the more reason to keep the inner-city schools open.

[speedog]

Couple of quick questions for you, 93JC.

One, do you have kids?

Two, are you actively involved in your kid's school if you have kids and if so, how?

Three, are you actively involved in the community that you reside in and if so, how?

Just trying to get an idea of your demographic - myself, I can answer yes to all three of the above and my wife and I have been very actively involved in our kid's schools and our community association as we either are or have actively sat as board members on the non-profit organizations at both our kid's schools and our community association.

That's not to say that you don't have valid input and ideas as someone who may not be able to answer yes to all of the above questions but it does give us an idea of where you're coming from - certainly my ideas and thoughts changed as I went from being a single to married to married with kids in the system and no doubt they'll change again as only one of my three kids is in the system now (two at U of C now).

[kw5150]

Get ready. There are tonnes of inner city yuppies about to have kids. Just do a survey and you will see.

If the old school site renovations are not justified, then I guess the land could be repurposed.......BUT, school grounds cannot be re-created in the future. If the land is redeveloped, the land is lost forever.

I say, do the study and make an informed decision. The vitality of inner city neighborhoods could depend on it.

There is nothing I love more than walking through the inner city and hearing children laughing and playing. As a kid, I would have loved to go to a school with skyline views.

[simster3]

I disagree with closing the schools down. I think it acts as an incentive for young couples to look to the inner-city when looking for a place to raise their future family. That is what my wife and I did, although school availability wasn't our biggest reason for not moving out to the burbs. I think that by having schools in the older neighbourhoods and not continually spending millions to bring them out the burbs will attract the people who value this to the inner city/established communities. If people are so short sighted about their housing choices that is their fault and the rest of us shouldn't have to foot the bill to build all these new schools when there are perfectly acceptable/structurally sound facilities already available. Yes, if there are needs for more desks, lets build more schools in the newer neighbourhoods. But if we are removing desks from good buildings to put them in new neighbourhoods, then I think we need to look at the whole system and people need to re-evaluate why they are living where they live.

[Innersoul1]

I think a number of you need to take into consideration how much it costs to operate a school that is not at optimal capacity. Money doesn't grow on trees and with current government funding it put a LOT of pressure on schools.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by 93JC

At some point I think the end-game of all of this is that suburban neighbourhoods will just stop getting new schools, and people will just have to deal with and accept having their kids bused to school. Don't like it? Don't move to a neighbourhood without a school.

While obviously there are a billion factors influencing choices of where to live... I'm just astounded at how many people seem to ignore this one.

I don't even have kids and never will, but the presence of a nearby school is a very comforting thought if for resale value alone. If I had kids, or even a vague desire to have them, a school in my neighbourhood would have been right at the top of my list.

I can't believe how many people completely ignore this one. And then bitch afterwards. This kinda feels a lot like people who live 40 miles outside of a city to save a few bucks on the old mortgage payment, and then show up on the nightly news to piss and moan about how bad their commute is and how much they spend on gas. Like, seriously?

[Cage]

I'm in the camp with OP, there should be more consideration to closing innercity schools where the local student population warrants it.

I point to Dalhousie as an example. There are currently two public elementary schools where only one is viable. The second school survives on a spanish immersion program that covers the whole NW division. Even with the Spanish immersion program, the school has poor utilization rate.

Closing one school in Dalhousise and implementing a bussing option is the most feasable use of funds. This way CBE does not have an operating budget that grows faster than population growth as there would be operating funds available to fully staff a new school in suburbs.

As for waiting until the next student population boom is going to happen, quite frankly, it will never come back to the hay days of mid70s and 80s. My wife's family has lived in Dalhousie all her life. MIL still lives in the same house and likely will for next 15 years. Same goes for most of the neighbors on MIL street. They had kids, who moved out to the burbs and the street residence are now grandparents. There has probably been about 50% turnover, but again this points to a need for only 1 school.

To the suggestion the school should lie dormant or be repurposed, I am opposed to the suggestion for Calgary area. Most older schools are based on the track of K-6, 7-9, 10-12 with the k-6 schools being in overabundent supply. Turning a K-6 school into K-9 school costs mega $ and stioll requires the pruning of the 7-9 school. better attempt to build new, even if the build new is in the same location. For example Highwood should consider dusting all their k-6 schools and colocating to a single K-9 school with advanced features that can compete with suburban school.

And for the record Freeweed, I live in Citadel and school was clearly on the list of factors when chosing a community. We shortlisted Tuscany and Royal Oak in our list as well. However, my wife and I were also trying to conceive at the same time as finding our first home outside of the downtown core. Were it not for getting on the family fast track; i doubt school would have enterred into the consideration criteria. Instead we would assume (like a lot of other suburban families) the elementary school would be built within first 10 years of community buildout. Further, with specific reference to Royal Oak, our assumption was the new elementary school was being built, We could not have assumed that RO elementary would be overpopulated day 1 and would still require some students to take a hefty bus ride to alternate school.

[93JC]

Originally Posted by speedog

Couple of quick questions for you, 93JC.

Couple? I count three.

One, do you have kids?

Nnnnnnnnope.

Two, are you actively involved in your kid's school if you have kids and if so, how?

Three, are you actively involved in the community that you reside in and if so, how?

Nnnnnnnope.

Just trying to get an idea of your demographic

Single, no kids. If you had asked me five years ago I would have said I wanted to get married and have kids. Now, couldn't care less.

myself, I can answer yes to all three of the above and my wife and I have been very actively involved in our kid's schools and our community association as we either are or have actively sat as board members on the non-profit organizations at both our kid's schools and our community association.

That's not to say that you don't have valid input and ideas as someone who may not be able to answer yes to all of the above questions but it does give us an idea of where you're coming from - certainly my ideas and thoughts changed as I went from being a single to married to married with kids in the system and no doubt they'll change again as only one of my three kids is in the system now (two at U of C now).

Having kids in the system and being a very active member of non-profits and community associations might cloud one's view of the externalities that a more detached, objective, impartial observer would pick up on.

[93JC]

Originally Posted by freeweed

While obviously there are a billion factors influencing choices of where to live... I'm just astounded at how many people seem to ignore this one.

Oh I agree in principle but the thing is it's not a factor. Not having a school is something that doesn't have to be factored in because everybody knows that if you bitch hard enough your suburban neighbourhood will get a school. Eventually. And then you'll bitch about how long it took and how incompetent the school board is for failing to build the school in the first place, despite the fact that the school board does not and never really did have the money to build your neighbourhood school.

[speedog]

Originally Posted by 93JC

Having kids in the system and being a very active member of non-profits and community associations might cloud one's view of the externalities that a more detached, objective, impartial observer would pick up on.

Could also be argued that a more detached, objective, impartial observer might not have the first hand experience and knowledge to properly act upon those very same externalities - if our community had relied solely upon observers, then we would've lost our outdoor pool years ago. Instead, involved community members with that clouded view banded together, saved our outdoor pool and have it making more money than it ever has - impartial observers would've closed it down (they tried) and would've taken a great plus away from our community.

[93JC]

And yet you want to close down a neighbourhood school while childless outsiders like me want to save it.

Opinions are like assholes and so on.

[speedog]

Originally Posted by 93JC

And yet you want to close down a neighbourhood school while childless outsiders like me want to save it.

Opinions are like assholes and so on.

Quite impressive I must say that you resort to something like your last statement above because someone can't be persuaded to have the same viewpoint as yours. I truly expected more than that considering what appeared to be a robust discussion regarding the concerns I raised in my initial post in this thread but alas, I was wrong - apparently it is a "my way or no way" world in this forum for some.

93JC, this thread is respectfuly your playground now.