6c. Delegation: Jeff Elzinga, Leslie Park Public School Council Ottawa Carleton District School Board – Western Area Accommodation Review Leslie Park Public School Parents’ Council Second Written Submission January 2017 Dear Trustees, We mean no prejudice to the parents, staff and students of Briargreen Public School. However, we have strong concerns that the recommendation to close Leslie Park Public School (LPPS) will have perverse effects in terms of learning outcomes for a large cohort of LPPS students, and unnecessary additional capital costs and running costs for the Board. In anecdotal discussion with both Board Staff and individual Trustees, we have been told that we are one of the smallest single-track English schools in the Board, so we must be closed. We also are concerned that that Board staff have not accurately presented both school’s attributes for an acceptable side-by-side comparison of school options for Trustees. We have been direct in requesting the Board to implement your own walk zone policy in undertaking this accommodation review. We feel that there would be immediate substantial savings in bussing costs if school attendance boundaries were adjusted to reflect walk zones. For historical reasons linked to the former cities of Nepean and Ottawa, Grant Alternative, Leslie Park Public School, Pinecrest Public School and Briargreen Public School are all sited within a 2km radius from each other. In addition to the existing LPPS neighbourhoods of Leslie Park, Valley Stream and Sheahan Estates which are in our existing school boundary’s walk zone, the entire neighbourhood of Briargreen, the majority of Morrison Heights, half of Qualicum and a significant part of Craig Henry neighbourhoods also fall into the 1.6km walk zone area of our school. Unfortunately, the siting of Briargreen Public School is 750m deep into a closed neighbourhood bounded by large green spaces, including the Pinecrest cemetery, the large Craig Henry city park and Hydro Ottawa power line corridors. Only a limited amount of additional neighbourhoods have a small portion of their communities falling into the Briargreen Public School walk zone. While Centrepointe is a contiguous neighbourhood and the Board staff noted in their report that they anticipated that a walk path between Briargreen and Centrepointe would enlarge the school’s walk zone potential, the Board staff did not respond to our request to confirm how many Briargreen students from Centrepointe were bussing or walking. Trustees need to understand historic decisions on the Briargreen school boundaries from the past two previous accommodation reviews. Briargreen is not a community school for students being bussed in from Qualicum and Cedarhill Estates neighbourhoods, as they are not contiguous neighbourhoods (2.5km and 8km away respectively). After closing Qualicum and Christie Schools in previous accommodation reviews, there was a decision to bolster the size of the Briargreen student population given the small and static neighbourhood footprint of the Briargreen neighbourhood. Both the communities of Cedarhill and Qualicum were added to the school boundary to ensure a viable catchment for Briargreen, which has included a running cost for bussing of $100K per year. Over a ten-year period, this is has been a $1M subsidy by taxpayers to help keep that school open with a 67% utilization rate. In accepting the Board recommendations to close Leslie Park and redirect our students to Briargreen, the Trustees will be accepting an unnecessary additional running cost of $150k per annum ($750K over five years) in addition to the existing $100K per annum bussing costs when other options are available to redraw school boundaries to reflect walk-zones and reduce long- term bussing costs for the Board. No other neighbourhood school in the Sir Robert Borden family of schools (nor the majority of schools in the Western Area review) is seeing the strong neighbourhood renewal and densification like the communities in Leslie Park Public School walk zone. We have over 1000 new housing units being built or in advanced planning stages within our school’s walk zone. This includes tearing down existing housing and rebuilding at a higher density. We are directly on the new Baseline Rapid Transit Corridor and are targeted for densification under the City of Ottawa masterplan. This is not the case for the majority of mature neighbourhoods in West Ottawa. Verbal discussions with Board planning staff acknowledged a possible demographic yield of 50-70 students for the current builds, but staff were unwilling to adjust their overall numbers. We publically disagree with Board planning staff analysis that the demographic potential for Leslie Park Public School attendance is flat-lined, given that we were asked to be looking at 20-year demographic projections and all the changes we foresee in our communities. Similarly, we would like to remind Trustees that Leslie Park Public School has been identified for closure in the previous two accommodation reviews. While our school was kept open with no changes to its school boundaries, public debate on keeping our school open over these three rounds of closures has had a chilling impact on our enrollment rates as parents chose to enroll in other schooling options for their children due to the perceived uncertainties. In staff decisions to promote Briargreen over Leslie Park, Leslie Park parents raised concerns about sending their children to an open concept school. We asked Board staff to reflect on the educational outcomes in open concept schools as our parents were anecdotally aware of many studies questioning this model throughout the eighties and nineties. More recently, Shield, Greenland and Dockrell (2010) report in their review of a forty-year timeframe of related literature that noise in open plan classrooms in primary schools affects educational outcomes and as such, recommend specific abatements and modifications. Prain et al (2014) identify specific concerns for learning disabled and lower socio-economic status student populations in open-concept schools and need for distinct learning and educational approaches to ensure student success in such an environment. We do not accept that the delivery of an English program with Core French in an open-concept school is the equivalent to the delivery of this program in a regular closed classroom setting. Academic literature confirms that the pedagogical delivery is highly differentiated for these two dissimilar classroom spaces. We would like to remind Trustees that adding the LPPS student cohort to Briargreen will effectively double the special needs population. While Board staff have admitted the difficulty in physically placing two autism classrooms in addition to a kindergarten with the current Briargreen school floorplan and are now recommending to move the autism classes to Woodroffe Public School, there has been no clear communication or commitment to enclose classrooms or abate noise at Briargreen, nor what that might cost in terms of specific technologies, vinyl curtains, building of wall or use of portables. For our IPRC’d kids, the majority have already had multiple transitions from school to school because of their learning difficulties. It is unfair to force another transition on them and place them in an open-concept school with unclear support in a physical environment that is known to be not ideal for all learners. We have repeatedly asked Board staff to outline their plans for abatements and modifications, including the costs so that transparent decision-making can be made and parents of our special needs kids can understand whether supports will be provided. Board staff have demonstrated an inconsistent portrayal of capital investments to Trustees and the public. We have noted that major capital upgrades like roof repair and window replacement have already been concluded for Leslie Park Public School, which both represent sunk costs and reduces the forward capital costs of the property which are already very low in comparison to other schools. Similarly, we have not received recognition for the capital upgrades that have been put into the school property from other parties, including new fixed sports infrastructures from the community soccer association and the complete rebuild of the pedestrian bridge across to access the school property by the city. We have experienced dismissive attitudes when challenging the positive characterization of Briargreen School attributes versus overlooking similar or better site characteristics at Leslie Park, which also represent diverse teaching opportunities and student life enhancement. Comparison of Attributes - Leslie Park Public School and Briargreen Public School Leslie Park Public School Attributes Briargreen Public School Attributes Building size: 2406m2 Building size: 3,910m2 Year built: 1966 Year built: 1970 Size of school property:2.3 ha Size of school property: 2.1ha Play area: 2.06ha Play area: 1.71ha School property attributes: School property attributes: Two mini soccer fields Soccer field One full size soccer field Five tether ball stations Jogging Track Enclosed Kindergarten play structure Enclosed Kindergarten play structure Junior play structure ($60K funds available, construction deferred) Number of regular classrooms: 8 Number of regular classrooms: 0 Number of kindergarten rooms: 2 Number of kindergarten rooms: 3 Number of open-concept rooms: 2 Number of open-concept rooms: 1 Currently divided with vinyl curtains into 4 Currently used to house