The Toronto District School Board has tipped off what promises to be a giant municipal fracas: it wants to close 70 schools. Parent anti-closure committees formed even before their schools were officially slated for shuttering.
This should sound familiar to Hamilton residents, given our public board's decision in 2012 to close eight high schools, and its recommendations made last year to close 11 elementary schools. And now, more good news: 18 of HWDSB's elementary schools are overcrowded, all of them in suburbs as a direct result of development growth. Debates about the closing and building of schools are marked by arguments over bus routes and repair bills and demographic shifts, but these points make me feel like crying, because they're superficial, ergo, pointless. It's not as if I'm in love with the public education system as it is, but the fact is that the loss of neighbourhood schools is a result of such deep-seated problems that it should bloody well make everyone weep. (more...)
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