Overcrowding in Ottawa’s downtown public schools has reached a tipping point. At Elgin Street Public School, some classes are held in the library. First Avenue Public School in the Glebe will be unable to find space for the new students expected to enroll in September.
While Elgin, First Avenue and Hopewell in Ottawa South are bursting at the seams, nearby Mutchmor and Glashan public schools have empty classrooms. The imbalance is the result of a range of factors, most notably the demand for the Early French Immersion programs in the overcrowded schools.
The board’s proposed solutions, presented at a recent public meeting, include redirecting First Avenue’s Grade 6 Early French Immersion students to Glashan, sending First Avenue’s junior kindergarten students to Mutchmor and relocating Hopewell’s Grade 4 to Grade 6 Middle French Immersion students to Mutchmor.
The common thread in all these plans is that they are disruptive to students, parents and teachers. Students will be taken out of their "home" schools and dropped into a new one. In all of them, parents may have children in the same program at different schools.
Worse, these plans are only temporary. Schools in Centretown and the Glebe are facing a much more serious disruption in the near future. In the spring, the board plans to launch an accommodation review committee to examine long-term solutions for the area. Students now face the prospect of moving for this September, only to face a second move in September 2012 when the long-term solutions are put in place.
For example, under one proposed plan Hopewell’s Grade 7 and 8 Middle French Immersion students would be moved to Glashan. The board’s report, however, acknowledges that Middle French Immersion at Glashan could be “revisited/undone” when long-term solutions are implemented.
When the school board makes its decision, trustees must keep their eyes on the long-term, even if the details of that plan have yet to be made. Students should not be forced to move multiple times in a short span of time.
The solution for this year must be a stop-gap measure, not something which tries to solve all of the enrolment problems in the area. Leaving students in a school which is at or slightly over capacity for one year is preferable to shuffling them around twice in two years, or adopting a solution that hasn’t been thoroughly studied.
The current proposals were drawn up with an eye on the short-term, but too often temporary solutions become permanent. The current situation means the school board must act, because First Avenue has no space for next year’s students, and other schools in the area will be full by September 2012.
Once these immediate pressures are resolved the situation will become one where the board only should act. A complex, disruptive move for 2011 might decrease incentives to adopt a disruptive long-term solution.
However, if the review committee does not recommend a workable, long-term solution, the board may be in the same situation as it is today, five or 10 years down the road.