ALARM BELLS GO OFF
Ottawa-Carleton board considers offering classes at only a few sites
Shannon Glenn, with son Carey, 4, is among the parents worried about what it would mean if the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board moved their kids to English-only schools.
When Dave Loehr’s son Spencer was in kindergarten, he and his wife decided to buck the prevailing educational trend in their Ottawa South neighbourhood and enrol him in an English-language program at the school a few blocks from their home. Spencer was inquisitive, and they figured he would benefit from studying subjects indepth in his native language. So while most of the neighbourhood kids headed to French immersion, Spencer joined the smaller English program at Hopewell Avenue Public School, where he’s currently flourishing in Grade 5.
Now Loehr and several other parents are raising the alarm about a move afoot at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board they fear could result in children like Spencer being moved out of their neighbourhoods and congregated at English-only schools.
The underlying issue has bedevilled the board for years, and it’s emerging again as trustees debate a plan for how elementary schools should be organized.
About half of the elementary children in the city’s largest English-language school board are enrolled in French immersion. (If specialized programs for kids with special needs are excluded from the calculation, the balance shifts more toward immersion, with about 59 per cent of children enrolled.) Many parents believe that learning a second language is beneficial and bilingualism will give their kids an edge in the job market.
But the popularity of immersion has drained the English program of students. English can no longer be offered at every school, staff warn. They favour creating some larger, English-only schools. And that collides with something many parents hold dear: the neighbourhood school open to all.
Loehr and other parents were alarmed after they noticed a single sentence in an innocuous-sounding report, the Elementary School Program Framework, sent out for public consultation last October: “The district aims to have approximately one and a half classes per grade level per program offered in elementary schools.”
“Wow,” was Loehr’s reaction. “That pretty much says there’s no chance of Hopewell retaining the English stream.”
Like most schools in the board, Hopewell offers both programs, but the English stream is much smaller. In some grades, there aren’t enough students to make one full class of English students. The numbers fluctuate, though, as students drop out of French immersion, or move from English into the middle French immersion program that starts in Grade 4.
Loehr crunched board enrolment numbers himself and concluded that 73 schools with English programs would fail to meet the guideline of 1.5 classes per grade. And 44 schools with French immersion programs wouldn’t, either. “What massive movement of students would result if the board followed that guideline?” he wondered.
He and other parents began a lobby campaign, emailing trustees, writing briefs, filling in the board’s opinion survey and making presentations at the school board.
Earlier this week, board staff released a revised framework report that removed the reference to 1.5 classes and replaced it with more general language. The 1.5 guideline was not intended to be a “hard cap,” but “rather an indicator of the size of program enrolment” needed to meet educational goals, the revised report says.
Trustees debate the report on Tuesday, 7 p.m., at the board office, 133 Greenbank Rd.
The trustee for the Hopewell school area, Shawn Menard, applauds staff for listening to the concerns of parents. But the general sentiment toward consolidation remains, Menard says. (And, in fact, the same 1.5-class guideline was contained in another report last year about the future of the board’s English program, but it attracted little attention at the time.)
Most schools in the board are dual or triple track, offering both English and one or two options for French immersion. A move toward more “single-track” schools would be a dramatic change that most parents would not support, Menard says. “I haven’t talked to one parent who says they want their schools to be completely separated into just English or just French.”
The elementary framework report is important because it will guide decisions such as which schools should close as the board works to whittle down excess student spaces over the next five years, he says.
“I don’t think parents are aware of this,” Menard says. “What’s important for parents to know is that once this (report) passes, our planning staff try to abide by it as much as possible . ... It can be used as a sort of big stick in the future to say, ‘Well, this is what’s passed, so we’re abiding by that.’ ”
Hopewell parents say the revised report doesn’t reflect their concerns.
“It’s very positive that they’ve dropped the specification of 1.5 classes,” parent Shannon Glenn says. “But what they’ve replaced it with is some language that is very general and will not provide any guidance.”
The revised report says the school board “is committed to providing rich learning environments with healthy and sustainable programs.” Who could disagree with that? It goes on to say that various factors may be considered when making decisions on school size and programs: enrolment, enrolment capacity, size of the school building, number of programs offered, school location, impact of program offering on other schools and programs, program demand, community interest and “resource allocation.”
It’s a long list, but Glenn says it doesn’t contain any of the things most important to the parents she knows. They want a school kids can walk to, offering both English and French programs, and reflecting the diversity in the neighbourhood. “A commitment to the English program would be nice.”
Her son Carey is in JK, and will attend the English program at Hopewell starting in Grade 1. (All kindergarten classes are now taught half in French and half in English.) Carey, who is autistic, loves school and has been embraced by his classmates, Glenn says. “He knows the kids in his class. They’re the same kids he plays with in the park.”
Creating single-track schools divides communities, she says. “You’d be splitting the kids in the neighbourhood. Some of them would attend the neighbourhood school and some would be bused to a large (English) school.”
It’s also elitist, she maintains, noting that the English program has an unfair reputation as a repository for children with learning disabilities or behaviour problems and immigrants learning English.
“We all know that immersion has become a proxy for academic performance, and that children who are disadvantaged for whatever reasons typically end up in the English program.”
That stigma would worsen if English programs were consolidated into separate schools, creating “ghettos,” she says.
Staff say the concentration of English programs at larger schools could improve education.
More children in each grade allows flexibility in arranging classes, for example. Teachers can decide which class to place students in, taking into account “social-emotional considerations such as having supportive friendships or identifying those who might benefit from being separated.”
Larger programs also allow teachers in the same grades to collaborate on lessons, “engage in professional dialogue around evidence-based instructional strategies and assessment and evaluation practices that have a high impact on student learning, well-being and achievement,” according to a statement from the school board.
Board psychologists and social workers would spend less time driving between schools and more time with children, staff say.
For Loehr and other parents, those benefits pale in comparison to the advantages of a neighbourhood school.
Same-grade teachers should be able to collaborate even if they aren’t in the same school, Loehr says. “We have this thing called the Internet, it’s pretty good for collaboration. I don’t think you need to create single-track schools to get teachers to talk to each other.”
Other parents say it’s important that children can switch programs without changing schools. Many students begin in French immersion, but drop out. Last year, for example, 70 per cent of kids in regular senior kindergarten classes were enrolled in French immersion. But in Grade 8, the share of students in French immersion was just under half, or 48 per cent.
Hopewell parent Kate Jaimet says it’s a “travesty” that an English school board would consider preventing children from attending their neighbourhood school because they want to study in English. Her younger daughter struggled in French immersion in Grade 1. By Grade 2, she was acting out at school. “She just didn’t understand what was going on in class.”
Her daughter has thrived since switching to the English program at the school, Jaimet told school trustees at a meeting. “She went from being the kid with the problem to the kid that was helping others.”
If her daughter had been forced to take a bus to an English-only school, she “would have felt like she flunked out of her school,” Jaimet said. And since her older daughter is in French immersion at Hopewell, the sisters would also be forced to attend different schools.
Finances also play a key role. At some schools, the number of English program students is tiny, creating small class sizes or double and even triple split grades. Since the board is funded by the province based on average class sizes, small classes at one school could mean larger classes elsewhere.
I haven’t talked to one parent who says they want their schools to be completely separated into just English or just French.