School boundaries present challenges
Trustees scramble to determine new wards ahead of fall elections
School trustees say adapting to the new Toronto District School Board boundaries will be an impossible and challenging task.
“The job will be much more intense. And it’s supposed to be a part-time job,” said Jennifer Arp, current trustee for Ward 8.
Faced with a deadline to draw new boundaries that correspond with the 25 new city wards, TDSB trustees rushed a vote Thursday for an option that balances the number of schools in each boundary.
Arp’s ward, which initially included Eglinton and Lawrence, will have to add Toronto-St. Paul’s in the new structure. She says her original ward had 17 schools with upward of 700 students each — some of them op- erating over capacity. The new Ward 8 will be made up of 33 schools and over 16,500 students total, more than any of the other new wards.
“These neighbourhoods are all going through intensification, and they’re all going through significant change,” she said.
“It’s not necessarily the number of schools that dictates the amount of work the trustee does.”
The Toronto Catholic District School Board also approved a plan for new ward boundaries. The board will still consist of 12 trustees, but their area representation will be scaled in accordance with 25 city wards.
With the ongoing revitalization of communities like Lawrence Heights, midtown Toronto and the Dufferin corridor, Arp says the new arrangement to use the number of schools in deciding which wards to combine is not equitable.
“These communities will not be served the way they are right now,” she said, noting travel distance will be longer for trustees, communication between trustees and superintendents will be slowed, and they will be slower to respond to issues.
Ward 11 trustee Shelley Laskin said it’s an issue that new wards will be much larger for trustees, and noted the lack of prior consultations and a very short campaign period before the election could have negative effects on the quality of education.