For the first time ever, the Toronto District School Board is reviewing all of our secondary schools at once with the vision to ensure all students have equitable access to programs and opportunities – as close to home as possible.
While some of our high schools have more students than they can support, other schools are operating way under capacity, which means that it is difficult, if not impossible, to offer courses beyond the core courses. Some schools offer amazing specialized programs such as CyberArts, International Baccalaureate, or programs in STEM. But not all schools offer these and they’re not evenly distributed around the city.
We are trying to right size our schools and have a minimum of 1,000 students per high school which maximizes not only the programming options, but also is a much more cost-effective way of operating. We are also working to reorganize some of these specialized programs so they are more fairly distributed and available to students across the Board. This is a long term plan – happening over the next eight years – but there are some steps that are happening now that will lay the groundwork for these changes.
“Our goal is to create a system of strong neighbourhood schools that provide rich programming and increased access to courses that support all pathways.”
Our Ward Don Valley North has three secondary schools (A Y Jackson Secondary School, Georges Vanier Secondary School, North East Year Round Alternative Centre) which fall into Secondary School Group 6. Group 6 consists of 15 secondary schools including the three schools in Don Valley North, York Mills CI, Don Mills CI, Victoria Park CI, Earl Haig SS, Marc Garneau CI and etc.
Within Group 6 there are 12,000 students, 1600 of which comes from other areas, and there are 900 students who resides in our area but attend schools in other Secondary School Groups. The average utilization rate of our schools is 86%.
The interim report is posted in the link below, details on Group 6 starts on page 142 of the report (it is page 25 in the Part 3 link).
TDSB Secondary Program Review – Part 1