As published in the Scarborough Mirror, Wednesday June 23, 2010

Schools in the TDSB to close within the next two years as a result of the ARC process include: Brooks Road Public School, Heron Park Junior Public School, Peter Secor Junior Public School, McCowan Road Junior Public School, Pringdale Gardens Junior Public School, Silverthorn Junior Public School, Arlington Middle School and Kent Senior Public School-Alpha II.

After nine months of debate and dissent, Scarborough families will be seeing some of the benefits of closing several schools.  During the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) general meting on Wednesday, June 23, the board finalized the closure of eight schools that were evaluated by Accommodation Review Committees (ARCs). Five of these school are in Scarborough.  To help soften the blow, trustees pledged almost $34 million in facility upgrades to the remaining schools in each Scarborough ARC and authorized the construction of two new schools as part of a five-year capital plan.  While TDSB chair Bruce Davis characterizes Scarborough as a “big winner” in the $397.5-million capital plan, local trustees feel it is just a case of a rapidly expanding area finally getting its due.

“You can say that Scarborough is coming out on top and you know what… that community was in need of a new school. It has flourished in the last 10 years or more. In the whole community we have recently built two new schools (Thomas L. Wells Public School and Brookside Public School) and now we will have another one because that community needs the room and has had lots of new developments,” said Scarborough Centre trustee Scott Harrison.

Part of the board’s newly approved five-year plan is to construct a Kindergarten to Grade 8 school on a patch of land slightly north of Meadowvale and Sheppard avenues. The budget for this development is estimated at $15.2 million.

A new secondary school in Scarborough was also approved during the meeting, but will require the closure of two other schools to fund it. Bendale Business and Technical Institute and David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute will be closed and a $41-million high school will be built on the land behind where Bendale currently sits near the corner of Lawrence and Midland avenues. This is the final result of an ARC that began in 2006.

The ARCs were established to deal with declining enrolment and financial pressures across the TDSB. The most recent round of ARCs established in October 2009 was met with skepticism by many parents and educators, but Harrison hopes the newly approved reinvestments will demonstrate that trustees are straight shooters.  ”The biggest part of it is taking us at our word. I remember a comment from a particular parent at the ARC for Bendale and Thomson saying, ‘We’ll never see anything from the Toronto board because they don’t do anything.’ Well now we are able to show them that all the work the community has put forward…is now resulting in benefits to the community,” said Harrison.

“This board, myself included, has not done the work we should have done years ago in closing and consolidating schools. We are finally getting that underway and we can see the benefits, on paper, that students will see in the schools down the road.”

By raising money through school closures, the board no longer has to rely on provincial grants as heavily as in the past. Davis said this strategy gives trustees more freedom to invest in areas of their choosing, but warns the capital plan will require more tough decisions in the future.  ”In two or three years we are going to do this whole (ARC) thing over again,” said Davis. “There will be more school closures in the future.”

BY MOIRA MACDONALD – As published in the Toronto Sun, April 13, 2010:

Change can move at a glacial pace, which is probably what members of Scarborough’s Bendale-Thomson school community have figured out.

But even slow-moving is better than no moving, and it sounds like this week these folks are a step closer to something good.

More than two years ago people from this group — students, parents, ratepayers, principals, teachers, local politicians and other school staff — came together at one of those hackle-raising things called an “accommodation review committee” (what I often call a school closure process).

They would talk about the futures of five different schools in the area bounded by Midland Ave., Lawrence Ave., Ellesmere Rd., and Brimley Rd.

It actually went a lot better than you might expect. By the end of it, people were pretty excited. The ARC recommended in April 2008 to bring three schools together, spanning junior kindergarten right through to Grade 12 into a “campus,” that would share resources and provide much better facilities.

Bendale Business and Technical Institute would be consolidated with David and Mary Thomson Collegiate into a single high school. The overcrowded Donwood Junior Public School, which abuts onto the same 38-acre property shared by Bendale and Thomson, would be “integrated” with Thomson.

The consolidated high school would be a “composite” school (the Toronto District School Board’s preferred model for the future) offering academic and technical courses, a life skills centre for developmentally delayed students, as well as specializations in event management and hospitality; health services; and sustainable development.

It would have an urban farm, a board staff conference centre, and chances for community organizations to contribute to and use space in the new building.

A large chunk of the financing would come from amalgamating the three schools (the Bendale tech school would be shut down and the new school built on the Bendale site) and downsizing the existing school buildings, as well as selling off a parcel of the large property, which sits close to the busy corner of Midland and Lawrence Aves.

New school, new programs, better facilities, new prospects. You can see why people were excited. They put their report in. In early 2009 trustees responded back positively and asked board bureaucrats to come back with a plan, ASAP, to move ahead.

So much for ASAP, because there’s been nothing to talk about since. Frustrated, local trustee Scott Harrison recently put together a new motion to get things going and rallied the community to show their support at a board committee meeting Monday.

It might just work. The committee has asked trustees at Wednesday’s full board meeting to put a June 2010 deadline on the previous “ASAP” plan and approve a request for proposal to hire an architect.

“I’m more positive today than I was yesterday,” Harrison told me Tuesday. If a case can be made that the project can pay for itself out of the revenue and savings generated by the redevelopment, Harrison believes shovels could be in the ground by June, 2011.

But the cost and how it will be covered is the thorny issue.

Until the board puts together a design plan and costs it out, we won’t know the estimated price tag. And the board’s ability to pay, through such things as proceeds from a land sale is also unclear.

Harrison figures that based on estimates he’s seen, there’s a shortfall of just under $20 million, which ain’t chump change.

Still, it would be a shame to waste this community’s enthusiasm and hard work.

And after a year of school closure doom-and-gloom, it would be in the board’s own interests to make good on its word that closing schools can actually lead to something better for kids.

The Alumni planning committee envisions a framed glass- or plexiglass-covered wall-mounted display, to complement the 25th anniversary framed autographs, perhaps near them in the upper hall at the top of the school’s front stairway.

We invite alumni and/or present Thomson students and staff who have graphic-designer or similar talents to submit possible designs for this commemorative display.

Here are suggested requirements for this display design:

• The eventual dimensions would be approximately 5-6 feet by 5-6 feet.

• Central to the design would be a large ’5′ and a large ’0′, outlined and with sufficient space within the outlines to mount a collage of photos and other memorabilia covering events and personalities from the first 50 years. The outlines could even be three-dimensional, if that catches your fancy.

• The school crest should be incorporated into the design somewhere. One possibility is in the centre of the 0. Another would be in the space between the 5 and the 0.

• Other components could include the dates 1959 and 2009 and spaces or outlines where other photos, etc. could be mounted.

• The school colours, scarlet, black and white are recommended for the design. It is possible that all memorabilia, photos, etc. would also be black-and-white, rather than including colour, to help implement this colour scheme.

• It is anticipated that a small plaque would be attached to the final display in a suitable place, with wording something like: Presented to David and Mary Thomson C. I. in celebration of the 50th anniversary in 2009. So that information need not be included in the design, unless you wish.

Proposed designs are to be submitted electronically to the Alumni email address: info@thomsonforever.ca by Friday, May 28. A committee will meet to judge entries on Monday, May 31. Include the name of the individual or group responsible for the design. The committee will contact by reply email all those who submit designs. They may wish to meet  with one or more designers to discuss the practicalities of constructing the final project before making a final decision. Our hope is to have the project constructed and installed by mid-October, 2010.

The committee is also on the look-out for memorabilia to include on the display: photos, programs, newspaper clippings, etc. that are part of the school’s history for the first 50 years. Whether or not you wish to create a display design, you are invited to submit any items you think would be of interest. However, to safeguard your originals and to make transfer to the final display as uncomplicated as possible, please submit these items electronically to the same email address: info@thomsonforever.ca by the same deadline of May 28. (In most cases, unless your original is also electronic, you will need to use a scanner or other device to create electronic files for the memorabilia.)

Thank you in advance for your interest and good luck!

1 – The Souvenir Booklets are in the mail! For those who ordered booklets from our second printing, they were mailed out on Friday, July 24. They should arrive some time in the following week. We hope you enjoy having a second reunion as you browse through the pages. Let us know if your booklet doesn’t arrive in the next couple of weeks.

2 – The Alumni Committee are also planning to send out a special anniversary edition of Thomson Tradewinds, the Alumni Newsletter, with reports and especially photos from the big day, May 2. Usually the newsletter goes out only to paid-up members of the Alumni. However, we are hoping to expand the mailing this time to include anyone who ordered souvenirs or Embers tickets for the reunion. If you want to be sure of receiving a copy of this 8-page full-colour souvenir and you are not already an Alumni member, we invite you to join by filling in the membership form which is available on this web-site or attached to this message (depending on where you read it first) and following the instructions on the form.

We also invite any of you who have special photos from the reunion that you would like us to consider including in the newsletter to email them in jpg format to stanleyfarrow@rogers.com or to rdoi@toyota.ca. We want the newsletter to capture as much of the excitement as possible, so don’t be shy!

Please leave your post-reunion remarks (click ‘comments’ below) and let’s keep the conversation going! All persons who leave comments will receive follow-up news by e-mail very shortly from the Alumni committee about future plans for this web site.