SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

TDSB To Create Choice

The Toronto District School Board is looking to create schools of choice.  The proposal, released yesterday, will see alternative schools modeled on private academies, such as a choir school, sports school, same sex schools, etc.  The new schools will be located in high-needs areas of the city.  See news reports here, here, and here.  This is very good news.

“The board’s hope is that by introducing these kinds of programs, it will be able to boost enrolment and attract students that might otherwise go to the private system.  ‘It’s about retaining and attracting students,’ said Dr. Spence.”  Bravo Dr. Spence!  You get it.

Dare we say that SQE played a big part in getting that ball rolling?  It only took four years.

Readers should know that in April 2006, SQE sponsored the Toronto leg of former Edmonton school director Angus McBeath’s speaking tour.  We called it:

“SAVING OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS: When cash-strapped school boards are losing students and budget deficits loom, can Ontario learn from Edmonton’s success in turning things around?”

McBeath was responsible for implementing Edmonton’s now famous and much copied system-wide reform, which came about as a direct result of trying to deal with declining enrolment and competition from charters and private schools.  McBeath asked, “What if we stopped acting like a monopoly?”,  and the rest is history.  SQE arranged for McBeath to meet with the board here in Toronto at that time. 

Naturally, the usual critics of choice have their say along with the usual hypocrisy.  In fact, one parent group leader has taken the words right out of Dr. Howard Fuller’s mouth.  (She must have read our March 22nd post.)  Ms. Kidder is quoted in the National Post:

“Choice is open to those with the capacity to choose.”  

And choose she did.

Now doesn’t that sound strangely similar to Dr. Fuller’s own words below?

“Those of us with money have the capacity to choose and the great hypocrisy that operates are those individuals who would never put their own children in certain schools denying poor parents the capacity to do it. We have teachers who teach in schools they would never put their own children in, demanding that other peoples’ children stay there. I find that to be hypocritical. We’ve got politicians running around talking about how important the public school structure is and then you ask them, ‘Well, where do your children go to school?’”  —From his January 2008 address to the Economic Club of Toronto where several TDSB trustees were in attendance.

Kidder is also quoted,  “What happens to the neighbourhood schools?”  Well, Annie, they get better.