TORONTO – Let us begin with an appeal to Premier Ford: for the love of anything sane and rational, please do not subject yourself to a review of the TCDSB video link here – from 24.11.14. Those who believed you when you promised the Archbishop of Toronto that you would uphold, if not protect, the [constitutional] continuity of Catholic schools, are likely to request that you place the Toronto C[haotic] School Board under supervision. 

Please understand, Mr. Premier, we are not talking about the Toronto [Public] District School Board – they are in a different class of total offence to the concept of social development, personal growth and any objective sense of personal dignity, responsibility and merit. Your new Minister of Education has already issued warnings to a bloated administration that they begin to take their roles seriously.

The TC[haotic]DSB seems to have surpassed its regrettable state of confused purpose  after the announcement you made in October of 2020 (https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/59018/ontario-building-new-schools-to-support-growing-etobicoke-community) regarding funds, $62.4 million allocated for two schools in Etobicoke. Money and partisan political objectives have a habit of disrupting any appearance of normalcy – $30 million of that specifically for Bishop Allen High School. Currently, its student population is double the school’s capacity, forcing housing in no less than 24 (or is it 26) portables; nobody can say “for sure”). Its Facilities may not be available for another two years.

Once the ownership of the former TDSB school, Scarlett Heights (SH), was transferred to the TC[haotic]DSB, claims and counter claims to “the booty” pitting one segment of the community against another for who has “first rights” (so medievally ‘prima nocte’ in tradition) to the facility, irrespective of its condition.

Meanwhile, any “plans” for the SH, at Royal York south of Dixon Rd., real or imagined, do not foresee a school opening until 2026. Some parents in the Bishop Allen community, through their trustee, asked for a feasibility study to explore the possibility of temporarily relocating their students on the SH site, circa 4-5 Kms north of Bishop Allen, in a different ward. The trustee for that ward, buttressed by parents in that ward, rejected any such effort, pointing them to a school (Don Bosco/temporarily Dante Alighieri Academy) as the ideal site for them – on Islington Avenue south of Highway 401, approximately 11kms northwest of Bishop Allen.

Their reasoning: Don Bosco is the [undeclared] relocation site for the Board; students can travel, just as the Dante students are doing from Lawrence and Dufferin area; relocation and use of facilities falls within the quasi-exclusive operational authority of Staff.

That would be the same Staff that, as of last December declared the elimination of a $100 million surplus and replaced it with a $58 million deficit. It has overseen a precipitous decline in enrolment from the mid-90,000 students to the low eighty thousands this year and a declared further projected decline of 569 students in the current academic year – and, with them a loss of a further $8,050,212 in Core Educational funding , per Ministry of Education estimate for ‘24-‘25.

Meanwhile, to this observer, it seemed that trustees were merely “preening” for the caucus elections scheduled for Monday night to select a new Chairman.

As an aside, what was a Minister in the Cabinet of the Provincial Government doing making a presentation on one side or the other?