A look at the task planners were given in changing boundaries and how they came up with their proposals.
When Ottawa’s largest school board released boundary changes for elementary schools on Feb. 28, some families were shocked about what it would mean for them.
For decades, there have been concerns about inequities in Ottawa-Carleton District School Board schools as French immersion programs drew students away from community schools, leaving some English-only schools with barely sustainable populations.
The entire goal of the boundary review was to return as many students as possible to their neighbourhood schools and to offer both the French immersion and the English programs in community schools, balancing out school populations and ensuring all elementary schools remained viable. That would result in less busing and fewer portable classrooms.
But parents in some neighbourhoods say that, as it stands, they are within view or earshot of their child’s school, but the new boundaries mean their children are being sent to schools outside their neighbourhoods.
Here’s a look at the task that planners were given in changing the boundaries and how they came up with the proposals they did.
Q: What were the parameters of this review?
A: Some OCDSB elementary schools have fewer than 200 students or more than 900. Planners at the school board were asked not to close any schools.
However, surplus spaces are never where planners want them to be or where they are particularly useful, Karyn Ostafichuk, the board’s general manager of planning, told trustees.
Existing schools come in different sizes and offer different programs. Most schools are dual-track, meaning they offer both French immersion and English programs. There are currently 15 English-only schools and 15 French-immersion schools. There are also nine different grade configurations in elementary schools, including Grade 7 and 8 schools.
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To make it even more complicated, most schools have multiple boundaries based on programs and grades. One school has seven sets of boundaries.
The alternative programs at five schools would be phased out under the proposed plan, which woud create more spaces in those schools.
One goal of the plan was to ensure that French-immersion and English boundaries were the same. Another goal was to give low-enrolment schools “sustainable” boundaries.
Q: Why have grade configurations changed under the proposal?
In some communities where there were more spaces than students, planners created kindergarten to Grade 3 schools that would feed into Grade 4 to 8 schools.
This adds a new “transition point” that may result in siblings going to different schools. It also means some schools will have to be retrofitted, although details and costs have not been released.
Q: What are “feeding patterns” and how will those be changed?
A: As it works now, when students reach the last grade in their school, they sometimes have to splinter off into a number of different schools. The new plan aims to keep these groups of students together. While this is not always possible when students leave to go to secondary schools or Grade 7 and 8, younger-grade students will remain together even if they change schools.
However, this creates a new problem. When two schools are paired in a community, that also changes the definition of “community” and students will be travelling farther.
Q: If the goal was the create community schools, why are some parents reporting that their children will be going to schools outside their neighbourhoods?
A: When planners created community schools, the boundaries might not be how a community defines itself, Ostafichuk told trustees.
“I understand that. We’re trying to reconcile 120 schools of various sizes and disparity in their geographic separation. Sometimes, when you draw a boundary, it doesn’t meet the definition of what the community defines itself.”
Under the plan, boundaries have also been simplified. In the past, some schools had boundaries that were roughly a square but also had a “panhandle” off to one side. School board planners have tried to straighten out those lines, Ostafichuk said.
Q: There has been in some neighbourhoods in the urban area and the older suburbs. Why have these neighbourhoods been particularly affected?
A: Some schools in the urban part of Ottawa and the older suburbs are less than a kilometre apart. This goes back to the days when there were two English public school boards in the city: Ottawa Board of Education and Carleton Board of Education.
Those two boards and the cities around the urban core were amalgamated 25 years ago, but clusters of schools along the former boundary lines remained. Some of these schools are under capacity, meaning the boundaries have to be shifted.
Q: Would “grandparenting” or phasing students out of schools over time help to avoid some of this upheaval?
A: Because of the scale and complexity of the proposal, the plan allows for only a limited amount of phasing in and out, Ostafichuk said.
While in an ordinary year 6,000 to 8,000 students change schools, under the proposal it will be 11,000 students in September 2026, when the plan will go ahead. That’s certainly an incredible change, she acknowledged.
The change will not be felt equitably across the district and the effects are more likely to be felt in the downtown core and the older suburbs, often in neighbourhoods where there are clusters of schools. In the downtown core, for example, there are a lot of English-only schools. In order for them to become dual-track schools, French immersion students must be drawn from other schools.
Q: Why will four schools remain as French immersion-only schools?
A: It’s about the numbers. About 70 per cent of students entering Grade 1 start in French immersion, which means there’s more demand for French-immersion spaces. Under the plan, there are no English-only schools.
Q: Are more issues expected to crop up in the coming weeks?
A: Undoubtedly. Parents have already raised questions of how splitting up grades will affect siblings and child-care arrangements for families that have multiple children as well as child-care centres.
Parents have also pointed out that, for some neighbourhoods, the model will also result in more school bus use, not less.
Q: Parents are already asking for changes to the new boundaries. Is that likely to happen on a neighbourhood level?
A: School board officials have appealed to trustees not to consider each school in isolation.
“Every time somebody comes forward with a boundary suggestion or a grade configuration suggestion, it’s not unique to one school,” Ostafichuk said. “It always involves another school and sometimes has a real domino effect through the district.”
Q: What’s next?
A: A decision on the elementary program model, including the boundary changes, will be made by trustees in April.
Families can provide feedback through an online survey available until March 25. There will also be in-person community meetings on March 6 and March 17, plus a virtual meeting on March 24. Details are available on the engage.ocdsb.ca webpage.
Meanwhile, there’s more change to come. The elementary program review is the first stage of a multi-year plan. The next stage will involve secondary programming and the process will eventually include early-years and child-care services plus adult and continuing education.
