September 19, 2003
  

It is out of deep concern combined with a sense of dismay that I pen this letter.

If I were limited to listing only one lesson learned from the changes to which the public education system has been subjected in the last few years, it would have to be that education is about more than just money. If we didn't know it before, we certainly know it now. There are many pieces to the complex puzzle that constitutes the public education system and its delivery. One obvious piece is a flawed and discredited education funding formula which continues to have a negative impact on everyone - boards, teachers, parents, and, most importantly, children within the government funded education system. The Rozanski Report only confirmed what many citizens in this province already suspected and what many parents, educators and school administrators already knew. However, my aim here is not to rail against the educational system in general (although that would be only too easy), because there are many things in it that we should highlight and celebrate. As you will find as you read my letter, I do have several much more focused concerns upon which I wish to concentrate.

Although much criticisms is being leveled against the state of education in Ontario, there are, in spite of all the odds and challenges, the brightest of lights shining in numerous schools across our province. One such place of enlightenment is a school right here in our own Halton Region. It is called Ecole Pine Grove School. Parents of children who attend the single track French Immersion program at Pine Grove have always known what the Fraser Institute has determined in its latest ranking of Ontario schools. Ecole Pine Grove is second to none in the list of public elementary schools in Halton. How shameful that this #1 public school that embodies 'excellence in education' is actually on the list of schools slated for possible closure at the end of this school year! Pine Grove consistently places with the top schools in Ontario ? and this despite half of the program being taught in French while most of the schools with which it is compared have a 100% English curriculum. The Ecole Pine Grove School community has an enviable 'je ne sais quoi' quality that includes outstanding teaching staff and administration, enthusiastic students and parents and a wide circle of supportive members of the community who believe in the values the school teaches and who understand the value-added contributions the school's students will make to the global community in coming years.

I am well aware that public education in Halton Region faces many difficult challenges. Accommodation is one such issue. Due to housing developments that continue to grow in northern and western Oakville, communities in different geographic areas are being pitted unwillingly against one another in their individual needs for an adequate number of public schools in their communities. The resulting shell game of portables, school consolidations/closures and new school construction makes victims of us all. However, the biggest category of victim in all this has to be our children. How shameful that our children are being used as pawns in this unconscionable shell game. These unwitting victims may have to pay the price for all this discord their entire tenure within the public school system. It was not their lack of planning and foresight that put them in this undesirable, unacceptable, and untenable position.

Like everyone concerned by the school situation and inevitable changes coming to West Oakville (I deliberately combine northwest and southwest Oakville because busing is a moot point that I will not bother to get into) I have opinions as to what is best for the children that live in this area. As a consequence of the complex state of the public education system in Halton Region, I cannot emphasize enough that I find it shameful that our children are being used as pawns in a very nasty shell game.

My husband and I have a son in grade 2 at Ecole Pine Grove School, while his younger brother attends Kindergarten at an extremely conveniently located private school around the corner from where we live; we do this because Ecole Pine Grove only begins with grade 1 and this school also serves as a great daycare for our younger son. We hope to be sending our youngest to Pine Grove's single track French Immersion program next fall. My husband and I are committed not only to the public education system, but to French Immersion, especially as it is presently delivered in a single track Centre at Ecole Pine Grove.

I hold opinions on the issues that you will have to decide, based on my own personal experiences. Experiential learning is how I've acquired my 'take' on things.

I am as firm a believer in multi-linguistic skills and an appreciation of other cultures as ever there was one. I am from a multi-lingual background. My maternal language is Czech, the language that I have always spoken with my parents at home, but I spent five out of my first six years of life in a predominantly Spanish-speaking Caribbean cultural environment. Furthermore, while my family lived in this environment, I attended the only available Kindergarten program which happened to be run in Russian. From Russian Kindergarten I moved on to grade one in a small Czech school (which existed because of a sufficiently large enough Czech-speaking community) where I spent half a school year. It may all sound very odd, but there you have my first 6 years.

We then had to move back into a fully Czech-speaking cultural environment for approximately four years. Until the end of grade two I attended a regular Czech elementary school across the street from where we lived, where Czech language was the only one taught. However, starting in grade three, I began attending a Czech school - at a rather significant commuting distance from home - where French was taught as a second language (this language program started in the third grade and continued to graduation with additional languages added in subsequent years). After two years of fairly intense French programming, Russian was added to the curriculum (in grade five), but this is where my central European education ends.

For a number of reasons, one of which was political, my family then moved to Canada and I, (almost halfway through grade five and at the approx. age of eleven) ended up in an English speaking school in Quebec City. This is the first time that I recall hearing an English word spoken. My parents wisely enrolled me in an English school because my French was quite good, and I cannot tell you how useful my newly-acquired French language skills were at this time! Most of my fellow students were Francophones whose home language was French, but whose parents wanted them to be fully bilingual, so they were sending their kids to an English school. My parents correctly guessed that if I attended a French school I would not develop English language skills in a predominantly French environment with much ease.

My family spent two years in Quebec City. I can say that by the end of grade five (within approximately six months at my new English-speaking school) I was fluent in English without the trace of an accent. My French was pretty good at this point too. I credit Mme Fortin, my grade five home room teacher for teaching me the nuances of pronouncing that dreaded English language blend of 'th' that otherwise confounds all those who have to learn English at a later age. Do you now see from whence I come with my immense appreciation of linguistic duality (at the very least) and broad cultural inclusiveness? I can attest to experiencing yet more culture shock (now in distinct versions of Canadian) as we moved west from La Belle Province to Calgary for five years. After Calgary I then spent the next nine years in Victoria B.C., where I completed grades eleven and twelve, graduated from high school, and completed a BA at UVic.

I can draw upon many lessons regarding schooling and education that I learned in these formative years. In the vernacular of my youth, having to change schools beyond the usual elementary/junior high/high school segregations simply 'sucks.' (Pardon the expression, but I believe that it is rather descriptive and its meaning hasn't changed in all these years.) What you are proposing to do in west Oakville by closing schools and moving children around different schools like mere baggage is simply not good for them. Ask anyone who has lived it, or, for that matter, talk to any child psychologist. I will put it plainly: changing schools arbitrarily & unnecessarily = 'bad' for learning and personal growth & development; staying in a consistent, high quality learning environment = 'good.' It isn't rocket science, and, furthermore, it should be a right granted to children by the powers that be and by those who care about education and child development.

The moves my family made were unfortunately necessary and some aspects I found very enriching (however, well after the fact), but it was still very, very tough each and every time. To illustrate that point, allow me to recall a particularly memorable day at a new school: the bus driver had to clean up my vomit on the way to school, a custodian had to clean up vomit in the hallway of the school that same day, and the bus driver had to clean the bus one more time during the way home! This is the level of stress through which you are considering putting ALL the children who you will displace through your arbitrary shell games. It helped that my parents included the whole family in their decision-making at every move, but the level of stress that I experienced and that children affected by school closures/moves will experience will be very similar.

Another lesson I learned through my exposures to other cultures during my formative years (and subsequent travel undertaken as an adult) is that those clichés that sound so trite are not so trite after all. We do live in a global community. We are definitely a part of a larger global community than what we have here in Oakville, Ontario. Leaning another language is just one way of making an effort to be a part of this larger community to which we are inextricably linked. It is said that being proficient in French will help one get a job. What I can state with certainty is that my linguistic abilities helped me enormously when I was applying to get into a highly competitive graduate school program. I was accepted on my first try not because I had graduated from my undergrad program with distinction (because I'm sure that most of my co-applicants had equally high GPAs), but because I had worked hard to acquire language skills that others did not have. Therein lies the difference. More kudos to a single track French Immersion Centre like Ecole Pine Grove School where children start to appreciate our global community and begin forging links to it through language and cultural studies.

I have another major concern which springs from the field of study within which I work. It is the topic of portables. As far as I'm concerned, it is telling that the word 'portable' (defined in my Canadian Oxford Dictionary as 'a small transportable building used as a classroom') is only a few words away from 'porta-potty!' I work for an organization whose mandate is education and training in occupational health and safety. Don't get me started on the subject of mould and poor indoor air quality in portables and the health and safety issues presented by these oversized porta-potties. If they're bad for adults, they're even worse for kids.

The mould concern, though of critical importance, is far from the only issue; in many instances you also have excessive levels of carbon dioxide, a main by-product of human respiration, which, by the way, can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness, and can contribute to irritated eye and nose membranes and affect people's ability to concentrate. You also often have improperly used and often inadequate HVAC systems. Another serious issue is noise. I can't say that I know intimately the particular design of portables used in Halton, but the typical portable classroom uses a wall-mounted heat pump. The return air contains no ductwork to separate the unit from the classroom (in some cases a student's head may be right in front of this return air opening). As such, noise generated by the unit is transmitted to the classroom. In many instances, teachers turn off the heat pump rather than try to talk over it. When this occurs, the classroom gets no ventilation.

Then you also have the additional issue of exhaust air: portables are often built with no exhaust air or even relief air provisions. It becomes difficult for the air conditioning unit to bring in fresh air when no means is provided for exhaust air. In this scenario, generally because of requirements to keep the building of tight construction, the room is pressurized and does not provide an outlet path for the fresh air. Then you also have the problem of excessive duct leakage: after a period of years, settling and often movement of the portable building, excessive duct leakage from loose connections occurs (duct tape is often used in joints which dries out over a period of years). This leakage precludes ventilation getting into the classroom. In addition, portables also present security issues that the main school building typically does not have. For example, the units are often placed wherever a Board can find space, perhaps far away from the rest of the school. In some cases, portables have to be situated a certain distance from the main building to comply with fire codes. In other cases, Boards may place them at the rear of the campus because they tend to be eyesores.

Need I go on? I will NEVER be confident that children housed in school portables are treated equitably. Just think of how you would feel in winter if you had to go to the bathroom; you'd probably try to wait it out and I doubt that this is a good thing from a health point of view. Given how long it took Halton to come around to the issue of mould in school portables, I cannot feel confident that the now mandated inspections are being done as exhaustively and diligently as they should. It will be over my cold, dead body that I will willingly see my children educated in a porta-potty. Given the number of schools you are looking to close in southwest Oakville, you are condemning hundreds of children to lives in porta-potties for their entire tenure in Halton Region's education system.

One last issue that I want to raise is Before/After School Care. Our son attends Ecole Pine Grove, but he has been attending the Gladys Speers YMCA Before/After School Care program because the Pine Grove Y program was at capacity when he started there in grade one. Thank goodness that he can be bused to Gladys Speers on one of the regular Pine Grove bus routes to a wonderfully run YMCA program. With so many schools on the closure block, have you considered whether there will be adequate space and an adequate number of facilities left in Before/After School Care programs in the southwest Oakville community? Many working parents rely on these programs to provide quality care for their children for a period of time before and after school. You can't just set up a quality program anywhere; there are numerous logistical issues to investigate and legislative limitations that have to be factored in at each available facility (Fire Code etc).

I believe that I have described a number of concerns that are important to me and my husband regarding the school closure situation you are considering. I can imagine that you would likely add that I have described them ad nauseum. Just be glad that I didn't get into all the other relevant issues that have been so well-documented by other concerned members of our immediate community. Suffice it to say that I am as passionate about a single track French Immersion Centre at Ecole Pine Grove as other more concise parents. I ask that you make the right decision in your deliberations. Do not close schools in the southwest and overcrowd the remaining schools. Do not relegate children to lives of quiet desperation in oversized porta-potties. You have an opportunity to do the right thing. Do not turn children into nomads moving from school to school or porta-potty to porta-potty. Do the right thing by them as they grow into tomorrow's citizens of the global community. Don't forget, these will be the empathetic adults of tomorrow who will be making decisions about your accommodations when you are retired and perhaps needing to make a move to that mouldy portable nursing home. What a revolutionary idea!

Merci for your attention. 

Sincerely,