The changes, if approved by trustees, would take effect in September 2026.
Changes to elementary school boundaries at Ottawa’s largest school board are to be posted online at the end of February.
The boundary changes are party of sweeping changes laid out in broad strokes in a report released Jan. 10. Under the plan, more children will be attending their neighbourhood schools. Some programs, including French immersion and the alternative programs now in place in five schools, would be discontinued.
Just how many children will be migrating back to each neighbourhood school — and what school is considered their “neighbourhood school” — is still unclear. But the board plans to release a detailed report online on Feb. 28, with discussion by trustees at a March 4 meeting.
With a few exceptions, most schools are expected to offer French immersion and enhanced English. Students who attend 39 classes for children with special needs will be transitioning back to their community schools.
If approved by trustees, many of the changes will be in place in September 2026.
Between 6,000 and 8,000 students move schools every year, director of education Pino Buffone told trustees on Tuesday night, the first opportunity trustees had to publicly ask senior staff about the plan.
The board often moves students, and there’s no question this will be a “significant” one-time move for students when the plan kicks in, Buffone conceded. But he framed it as a short-term pain, long-term gain scenario. While the changes are not expected to save money, except for transportation, they will allow the board to redistribute staff and to improve equity.
Evening Update
That displacement and dislocation is not insignificant, but it’s important to balance that against the numerous benefits, he said.
The goal is to keep more communities “whole,” Buffone said. Some schools, often those that don’t offer French immersion, have low enrolments. Elementary schools in the OCDSB can have more than 900 students or fewer than 200.
In some cases, schools, 80 to 90 per cent of students aren’t going to their community school, he said. Most schools have between one and seven boundaries, he told trustees.
“If you think about seven boundaries for one given school, you’re already dividing up that community.”
The school board already moves thousands of students around every year and wants to achieve less movement long-term, Buffone said.
“We do too much movement right now. So we’re looking at a move that’s not going to be easy for us, but we actually need to reduce that very problem.”
Meanwhile, trustees had questions about transitions from programs proposed to be discontinued or phased out.
Trustee Suzanne Nash said she had fielded numerous for questions from parents about what would happen to students in the board’s alternative schools, which operate under educational tenets such as co-operation and teamwork, parental involvement and multi-age groupings. The report has argued that these tenets have already been absorbed into mainstream classrooms.
There are a number of students with special needs in the alternative schools, Nash said.
“Just sending them back into their community without having a plan may not be the best thing for them,” she said.
Brett Reynolds, the OCDSB’s associate associate director of education, said there may be some things that would be different in terms of the culture and the climate in alternative schools, but students with special education needs would receive the same support in a community school.
There were also questions around integrating the students from specialized programs back into community schools.
Students who are transitioning from classes that will get phased out will be allowed to remain until they age out of the program, and there will be no immediate re-integration of students into community schools, said Kate Stoudt, acting superintendent of learning support services. Phasing out will depend on the number of years each student spends in the program.
“Those students who are currently in those programs, we will have a transition plan for them as they move through their next two or three years,” Stoudt said.
Trustee Lyra Evans said she expected to hear a lot from families about grandfathering students at their current schools once the proposed new boundaries were released.
“I think, as soon as we highlight what students are likely to move, which programs can end, we will hear a great deal from families about grandfathering their oldest kid, all their kids, the one who is graduating a year from now. Can we speak about what has been considered in terms of grandfathering?” she asked Buffone.
School board managers are doing their best to make transitions as seamless as possible and are looking for ways to prevent “quirky scenarios” where students will be required to move multiple times, Buffone replied.
“We’re not a in a position — physically, operationally or fiscally — to grandfather every single student in their current space,” he said.
