There are a lot of issues in Milton, basically though the main one is there are not enough spaces for the students. There have been three new public schools built - Chris Hadfield, Hawthorne Village and Bruce Trail. There is a fourth school that was supposed to open in Sept. 2008, but the land it is supposed to be built on is held up in an OMB dispute. The hearing for that is scheduled for January of '08. Even if the dispute gets settled at that time, it will be too late for an "08 opening.
Schools #5 and #6 are supposed to be built over in the escarpment area. Since #4, is held up, the board has planned to go ahead and build #5 AND #6 prior to the opening of #4.
In the meantime, Sam Sherratt school is the holding school for the students that are supposed to go to Milton #4. Sam Sherratt was built for 394 students. It currently has more than 465 (full time) and more are arriving all the time.
Hawthorne Village was built for 584 students and currently has more than 900 full time students.
If the fourth school does not get built, the board will open #5 first, take all the students that are in Sam Sherratt instead of #4 and move them to #5. When #4 gets built those students will be moved back to #4.
From the "Milton #4 School Delay" Sticky...
Quote:
Schools are built with an OTG - on the ground capacity number. Hawthorne's is 584. That is how many students are able to recieve a quality education in that building.
When you add portables and/or a portapack as Hawthorne has, you can increase the number of classrooms, but it does not increase the size of your gym, library, art room, music room, computer lab, science lab or tech room. Those rooms are built to accommodate 584 kids. When you double the ammount of kids that have to share those spaces, you are cutting their access time to those rooms and programs in half!
At Chris Hadfield a few years ago, the enrolment numbers jumped dramatically over one summer. The principal cut out all gym time for the 300 kindergarten students to accommodate all the older kids.
There are six periods in school each day. Hawthorne Village has 42 classes this year. How many of them will be able to get into the library each week? Same thing with all of the other rooms I mentioned.
This has more to do with programming and quality of education than it has to do with "where do we put the kids"?
Another thing to consider is personal space. Do you know what it looks like to have a bell ring and watch 800 kids try to change classes and get to their lockers? They can't move. They are crammed in like sardines. It's like walking through a crowded subway station. Heaven forbid if you get caught in the hallway with a bunch of kindergartens.
Lunch time for a school with 1100 kids means splitting the kids in half and having half of them eat first while the others play outside and then switching so that they are not too crowded on the playground. That requires double the ammount of supervision - which the board does not provide.
Consider the effect on the bathrooms. We were lucky to have a few extra toilets added with our portapack to accommodate another 200 kids, but you don't get that with portables. Do you want your kids to wash their hands before they eat lunch? Imagine hundreds of kids trying to get to the bathroom at the start of the lunch period to do that.
Do your children like to play sports? All schools have the same number of teams. In overcrowded schools, the children have to compete with twice as many kids for a place on a team. It is much harder to make a team in a large school.
The Milton Public School Trustee and our Superintendant have created Milton Super Council with school council chairs and administrators from each of the local schools to discuss common concerns. Accommodation is the focus at this time. We are currently waiting for the next meeting (hopefully in the next couple of weeks) to see what steps the planning department will be taking to take some of the pressures off of the schools that are overcrowded.
I expect that there will be a public information meeting held by the Superintendant and Trustee to make those plans known to everyone shortly after the supercouncil meeting.
We are also eagerly awaiting the results of the OMB hearing in January to see if the land will become available to the school board for #4.
I think that's it in a nutshell.