Hamilton Wentworth District School Board

[thistleclub]

Ontario moves to speed up process for closing schools
(The Globe and Mail, Karen Howlett, Apr 5 2015)

The Ontario government is speeding up the process for closing schools, as part of a crackdown on publicly funded boards with too many classrooms sitting empty.

Several boards are grappling with declining enrolment across Ontario, where about 600 schools, or one in eight, are less than half full, according to the Education Ministry. School boards spend $1-billion a year, 5 per cent of their provincial operating budgets, on buildings with an excess of empty space. They are coming under renewed pressure to address the financial drain, with Education Minister Liz Sandals saying the money should be used instead for student programs.

Her ministry defines schools less than two-thirds full as “underutilized” – candidates for either closing or changes to their boundaries or programs they offer. The ministry unveiled new guidelines 10 days ago for community consultations that must take place before a school can be closed. But critics say the guidelines limit public engagement and make it easier to close schools.

A committee reviewing the fate of a school is required to hold two public meetings instead of four under the new regime, and the time frame for conducting a review is cut to five months from seven. Another major change causing considerable angst for municipal officials is a shift in emphasis toward student achievement and away from considering the impact of closing a school on the well-being of a community and the local economy...

The new process gives municipal governments a formal role for the first time, providing an opportunity for school boards to collaborate with municipalities in making the best use of school space.

“Ultimately, we actually want the school boards and the municipalities to have an ongoing relationship where [they] are sharing their planning data so that the municipalities are aware of where there are clusters of underutilized schools,” Ms. Sandals said in a recent interview.


Read it in full here.