TDSB draws up ward map options

Trustees must decide on one map next week

The Toronto District School Board has put out a series of maps outlining what the new boundaries of trustee wards could be after the provincial government’s snap decision to reduce 47 city councillors to 25 left school boards scrambling.

If the schools cannot approve a new ward map by Aug. 14 the provincial government will impose its own.

Each new map has a different priority — such as balancing the number of students or schools in each ward — and that means different wards get combined to fit those priorities.

Option1.1tries to cut down on the variance between the number of schools in each of the new wards.

Nine wards would be affected. The number of schools per ward would go from 19 to 34.

Option 1.2 is similar to the first but focuses on improving the grouping of downtown neighbourhoods.

The same nine wards would be affected, going from 19 to 43 schools per ward.

Option 2 looks at how many students are in each ward as opposed to schools.

Eight wards would be affected, going from 17 to 47 schools per ward.

Option 3.1 tries to spread distribution of the electoral population between the wards. It would affect eight wards and go from 10 to 57 schools per ward.

Option 3.2 takes existing Learning Centres into account.

Nine wards would be affected, going to 57 schools per ward from 10.

Option 4 aims for the least amount of geographic change from the existing wards to the new ones. Eight wards would be affected going from 16 schools to 48 per ward.