Fate of 175-year-old school site to be decided

Fate of 175-year-old school site to be decided. The Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) is discussing the future of of Briar Hill Junior Public School in light of its dropped enrolment. Courtesy/GOOGLE STREET VIEW

For almost 175 years, Briar Hill Junior public school and its predecessors have been places of learning for kids in the neighbourhoods of Fairbank, Briar Hill and Belgravia.

The school's history is one of location - not of name - and actually began across the street from its current spot when a humble log building called Needham's School was built in 1836-37 on the site of what is now the Fairbank United Church, according to Heritage Toronto. By 1863, Needham's was replaced with a one-room brick schoolhouse called Fairbank, which was located on the east side of Dufferin on Matthew Parsons's farm. In 1927, the growing community necessitated the replacement of Fairbank, by this time two rooms, with a larger three-storey, eight-room brick building named Briar Hill school.

This newest school, though, is now 73 years old and may have reached its end, its existence as an English public school at least threatened due to declining enrolment. Its last hope may lie in the redevelopment of the 2.4-acre school property, located at the northeast corner of Dufferin and Briar Hill Avenue, with condos or commercial units and a scaled-down elementary school.

Toronto District School Board (TDSB) staff have been analyzing that option and will update the community at a public meeting Monday, Aug. 30 at 7 p.m. in the gymnasium of Fairbank Middle School, 2335 Dufferin St. However, staff are not yet ready to provide recommendations to trustees at the Sept. 7 board meeting.

Dufferin-Eglinton schools under-enrolled

The Dufferin-Eglinton community will therefore have to wait a little longer for an end to the board's very lengthy review of the future of three local elementary schools - the junior kindergarten-to-Grade 5 (JK-5) Briar Hill, the grades 6-8 Fairbank Middle School located about a kilometre south, and the JK-6 West Preparatory public school located on the east side of Allen Road in Forest Hill North.

With fewer students projected in the neighbourhood, the school board has estimated that by 2018 Fairbank would be operating at 43 per cent capacity, Briar Hill at 68 per cent and West Preparatory at 95 per cent. Schools usually aim to reach at least 80 per cent capacity, the critical mass at which the province will allocate funding as if the school were at full capacity.

Faced with those figures, the board set up an Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) in fall 2009 that included the principal and two parents from each of the three schools, along with some students, a community member and school board staff.

In April, the ARC recommended closing Briar Hill, making Fairbank Middle School a full JK-8 school, and leaving West Prepatory in its current form. Under the new arrangement, West Preparatory would be operating at 93 per cent and Fairbank at 82 per cent by 2018. TDSB staff said that closing Briar Hill would also save an estimated $200,000 every year in operational costs and an additional $4 million in repair costs by 2018.

Before the board could vote on consolidating Briar Hill with Fairbank, however, the area's trustee Howard Goodman (Eglinton-Lawrence) wrote a letter to the board asking it to examine redevelopment opportunities for Briar Hill which would allow a new school to remain on site in a JK-3 format, unique for Toronto's school board but which exists in the United States. Fairbank Middle School would become a grades 4-8 school under Goodman's proposal. He also asked the board to investigate the feasibility of West Preparatory becoming a JK-Grade 8 school.

"The Briar Hill site, which fronts on Dufferin, is ideal for a multi-storey residential or commercial building incorporating a school, daycare, and early learning services into the first floor or two of the building," Goodman wrote as explanation for his request.

The cost of a new, smaller school would likely be less than the costs to add classrooms at Fairbank and West Preparatory to accommodate Briar Hill's student body, which TDSB staff estimated at $3.6 million, he added.

Such a public-private redevelopment has happened in the past. This September, students at North Toronto Collegiate Institute will enter the hallways of their new high school, paid for thanks to the board's sale of part of the school property to Tridel for its luxury "The Republic" condominium towers. The old, stately high school building will soon be demolished to provide a field for students.

However, the trustee for that area, Josh Matlow (St. Paul's), said there's one major difference between North Toronto and Briar Hill - location. Lands near Yonge Street and Eglinton are worth a lot more to developers than Dufferin and Eglinton, said Matlow, putting the ability of a redevelopment to pay for a new Briar Hill school in doubt.

While critical that Goodman didn't accept the "democratic process" of the ARC, Matlow said he's willing to see what board staff have determined about his proposal. He predicts, however, they'll dismiss the suggestion, leading therefore to a hard but necessary decision to close Briar Hill.

The board would then have the option to lease the school or sell it through a process whereby other school boards have first crack at acquiring the property. For example, the board closed D.B. Hood Community School, located immediately beside Fairbank MS, in 2001 and is now leasing the school to Lycée Français de Toronto.

"Of course I empathize with them (the Briar Hill community) though," said Matlow. "I mean, a school closed down in my community too at Arlington (Middle School). And I didn't like that but I also knew it was the right thing to do."

"We have a declining enrolment of about roughly 4,000 students a year," he said. "The reality is that if you have fewer students, you have fewer funds from the province to run your schools and if you've got fewer funds it means everybody loses out across the city."

Larger schools not better: Parents

The ARC's recommendation to close Briar Hill was not unanimous. The two Briar Hill school parents on the ARC wrote a "minority report" criticizing the board as favouring larger schools, and stating there are many benefits to smaller schools.

The parents were likely referring to the board's approval in 2008 of what is now called the Better Schools, Brighter Futures initiative, which identified a preference to develop JK-8 schools, rather than separate junior and middle schools, of about 450 students and high schools with 1,200 students.

"It wasn't cast in stone," said Trustee John Campbell (Etobicoke Centre), who was the board's chair when the initiative passed. "It is a guideline toward which the board will aim. But with any guideline there may be exceptions...The board is certainly not going to get rid of all small schools. We have many schools that are JK-5 where the school is a fully functioning school."

However, the board has consolidated a number of under-enrolled schools this year, generally by combining a junior and middle school into one full elementary school and then declaring the empty school for sale.

Keeping "half empty" schools open causes three major problems, explained Campbell. The first is the cost as the board doesn't have the funding to keep up maintenance on the schools it owns and it saves money on staffing in consolidated schools. The second is that there are less programming opportunities available in smaller schools for items such as choir, sports or drama. And finally, he said the province told the board it would not provide funding for new schools needed in growing areas such as Scarborough unless the board got rid of excess school space in the rest of its system.