The Ministry's working group on the impacts of declining enrolment is interested in concerns re impact and more importantly in suggestions of what to do about it. Official organisations are providing their input but you as a citizen or your School Council certainly can provide input also and the Ministry is inviting this. The working group is to report in December I believe.

Ontario, indeed most regions of Canada, have been experiencing demographic declining enrolment in school age children. This is leading directly to pressure to close schools across Ontario. It is creating important pressure on School Boards to cope with declining funding when their overhead or structural costs do not decline in tandem (i.e. if its 18 or 19 students in a class they still need a school and a teacher and a bus and a principal and so forth). The government provides some special declining enrolment relief but our Board and Boards across Ontario have been stating it is not enough of an offset.

The Minister has stated publicly that she wants to explore creative solutions to keeping schools open including School Board / City partnerships to create community hubs. Unstated by the Minister is an obvious solution to ensuring each community retains at least one school and to ensure students can walk to school and there is not the time out of their lives and the cost to us all of unneeded transport … and that is either moving explicitly to one school system or by Regulation requiring School Boards to cooperate on facilities and accommodation. There is one school in Southern Ontario which is a joint Catholic / Public school and there could be more. There is at least one in Northern Ontario that is a joint French and English Public school. Declining enrolment impacts are particularly severe in rural areas and Northern areas where there is also a continuing trend to move into the cities at work as well as over all enrolment declines. We have rural areas at the OCSDSB and it is notable that most recent closures have been in our rural and far suburban areas. It is likely we will have to look at some closures in the inner city in the not too distant future, unless the landscape changes. The declining enrolment question touches importantly on questions of optimum school size, minimum program size, definitions of what a community is and what schools are for, of the impact of split classes for good and for ill, and of adequate and equitable access to support specialists of one kind or another. The impacts of declining enrolment are large and raise large questions also.

The OCDSB has rebounded unexpectedly this year by about a few hundred at last count and we'll see if this holds true or is a blip or not in time. Our Board has suffered large declines in students since the high water mark a few years ago. We had been slated to lose students for another short few years and then plateauing and even rising slightly as echo-echo booms kids started to enter the system (a further damping down of the original boom and its echo).

People for Education (P4E) maintains a watch list of schools recently closed and up for closure across Ontario and it is at www.peopleforeducation.com/list_schools_accommodation_review2008

If you have concerns to express or creative solutions to offer then you have until Tue Sep 30th to get them in. Please consider forwarding or CCing to me also.

The Ministry backgrounder info is at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/enrolment.html

The Ministry e-mail address to send in comments to is at: mailto:enrolmentgroup2008@ontario.ca