New lease on life for schools killed during Revolution

New lease on life for schools killed during Revolution. Artscape is buying the former Shaw Public School in Trinity-Bellwoods. The school has been vacant for almost a decade. Photo/COURTESY

The historic, 85-year-old Shaw Public School building in the Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood, which has been empty for almost a decade, is on the verge of reopening as a home for artists' studios, galleries, offices for non-profit agencies and a small cafe. City council recently gave the go ahead to the new uses for the property and the school board's land management arm expects to finalize the sale of the building to Artscape in December.

"The historic Shaw Street School is located in the heart of an already vibrant arts and residential neighbourhood and we're thrilled to be redeveloping it into a dynamic community asset," stated Tim Jones, President and CEO of Artscape, in an email.

Shaw was the last school site to remain vacant among those shut down by the Toronto District School Board in 1999 and 2000. The others (see map below) are now homes for private or French schools, day cares and other community services. Two former high schools, Bathurst Heights in North York and Midland CI in Scarborough, are also being returned to full operational status though not in their original incarnations.

"That's what we envisioned when we did it (closed the schools)," said former trustee Gail Nyberg, who was the school board chair and most visible public proponent for closing schools at the beginning of the millennium. "We didn't envision tearing them down. We envisioned keeping the property and using it for community use and renting them."

Now the executive director of the Daily Bread Food Bank, Nyberg recalled the heated meetings that took place in Toronto following the introduction of a new education funding formula by then Premier Mike Harris's Tory government in the late 1990s.

"Everybody's attached to their school and I understand it," she said. "It was pretty volatile but I believe we did the right thing."

Prior to the funding formula, school boards could raise property taxes to complement their funding from the province, a mechanism some had used to keep afloat schools that were suffering from low enrollment. Faced with a new reality, the newly amalgamated school board originally announced it would have to close more than 100 schools.

"And I mean the city erupted," said Parkdale-High Park Trustee Irene Atkinson, who was first elected 38 years ago. "And then the board determined it wouldn't do that, there was so much community pressure."

The provincial government provided the school board with transition funds until 2003. However, led by Nyberg, the board said it would still have to close 30 schools over three years, all of which had an enrollment of less than 55 per cent of the Ministry-rated capacity.

"Yes, we need to push the province for more funding," Nyberg said during the September 1999 meeting when the board decided to close schools in the former Toronto for the first time in decades. "But how can we say to the minister we want to keep schools open when they're only one-quarter full and the kids could walk to another school nearby?"

"The first 10 schools (closed in 1999) certainly did raise a big reaction because most of them, not all of them, were in the former city of Toronto. In the suburbs...schools had been closed when there weren't enough students. But the old Toronto board had a philosophy of 'leave it open'," recalled Nyberg recently.

The board's commitment to shutting down 10 schools a year wavered in the ensuing months, and in February 2000, it voted to close only four more school sites.

The school board's dominant philosophy changed later that year during the municipal election, when a new slate of anti-closure trustees were elected. That board took a more antagonistic stance to the provincial government and its funding formula, going so far as to break the law when 12 of 22 trustees voted not to submit a balanced budget in 2002. It also halted school closures and reversed the decision to close Bruce Junior Public School in Leslieville.

Ironically, the pendulum has since swung back in the opposite direction, and Bruce Junior is one of approximately 100 schools considered under-enrolled. Over the past two years, the board has initiated accommodation review committee (ARC) processes in more than a dozen school communities, most resulting in the closure of at least one school, which has then been declared surplus for lease or sale.

Atkinson, who voted against the school closures in 1999 but who has recently voted in favour of closures, said the difference now is there is a formal public procedure followed to gather public input before major changes are made.

"They're (ARCs) not always going to be right but at least community people are involved and there's public meetings...and people discuss the pros and cons," explained Atkinson, who said she prefers to keep neighbourhood schools open if possible, such as by realigining boundaries to even out enrollment levels or twinning schools.

(However), "it's all very well to have a school at 35 per cent (capacity) but they're being propped up at the expense of other schools," she added. "They have a secretary, they have a caretaker, they have a principal, they have to be heated and maintained."

Nyberg, who went on to lose a race for council in 2000, said she doesn't have regrets about the path the board took in 1999.

"Actually, I think the board is back to doing what I think they should have done 10 years ago," she said.

~ with files from Torstar News Service