The Hell-Hole That Is Archbishop Romero High School

The mood was tense on Thursday night as dozens of parents fought a possible boundary change that could send some future Etobicoke high school students on a 45-minute commute to North York.

It was a full house for the Toronto Catholic District School Board meeting as parent after parent made their case in front of trustees, pushing back against a proposal that aims to fix the enrolment pressure at Michael Power, Father John Redmond and Bishop Allen — three high-performing Etobicoke high schools.

The proposal would mean students from feeder schools could wind up elsewhere, be it St. Basil-the-Great, which is near Sheppard Avenue West and Highway 400, or Blessed Archbishop Romero, at Humber Boulevard and Weston Road.

Two of those feeder school students, Kejsi Musta and Sarah Zewdu, made a presentation in front of the trustees, which led to one of several tense moments in the meeting.

"We did our research and found Archbishop Romero was rated 4.5 out of 10 on the website Fraser Institute. Why would we want to go to a school that won't provide ..." said Zewdu, before being cut off by Ward 5 trustee Maria Rizzo.

"I'm going to ask you, please: Don't put down other schools. It's really not kind to them," said Rizzo. The interruption was met with a mix of applause and boos.

Later, father of three Victor Capella was also cut off while attempting to highlight crime statistics in the area surrounding Archbishop Romero.  (more...)

Parents fight Etobicoke Catholic school boundary change proposal at tense trustee meeting

I have personal accounts of the deplorable condition of this school that was built over the site of a buried garbage dump. Students would become sick when the stench rose out of the ground on a warm day. The closet Nazis running the school district would never send their kids to that dump.