Why Loud Politics Won't Build Our High School (And What Actually Will)

There’s been a lot of talk on social media and in the local media about an “EG high school”. As a former public school board trustee for 15 years, including Chair of the York Region District School Board, Chair of their Property Management and Budget Committees, and a former Vice President of the Ontario School Boards' Association, I thought it might be helpful to go through the history of why EG doesn’t currently have its own high school and, more importantly, how we will get one.

TLDR: We all want a high school in EG but building schools has nothing to do with Council asking for one, and everything to do with ensuring we have sewage capacity ready when the Province agrees with the school board, that one is needed, in addition to the two already on our border currently serving our students. Getting one now won’t cut bus times for most kids but may lead to inferior programs than what they are currently benefiting from.

The EG High School that Almost Was

Many of us remember when East Gwillimbury was going to get a high school, back in the early 2000's. Unfortunately, as plans progressed, the Town didn’t have the servicing allocation (specifically sewage), and the school board was forced to look for an alternate site. Because schools don’t need to adhere to municipal boundaries – they are funded by the province not the municipality - the site they chose to replace the unserviced EG site with was Mulock SS. This was the high school we all thought we were going to get 20+ years ago. It went to Newmarket because EG couldn’t provide the infrastructure to support it.

As if that blow to our bid for a high school wasn’t bad enough, before Mulock SS even had time to reach full capacity, the province cancelled grade 13 / OAC – the fifth year of high school – in essence removing almost 20% of the students from all existing high schools across the province. At that point we had four high schools serving the East Gwillimbury/Newmarket planning area, which were suddenly more than 20% under capacity. In total over 1,000 empty seats needing to be filled. Because the province wants to see all surrounding schools over capacity before contemplating a new school – in effect, we were now a couple of thousand students away from building a case for new school funding.

In the following years the school board saw huge growth in the south end of the region. Vaughan and Markham quickly made up for the students lost when OAC was cut. Newmarket on the other hand, was nearing full built out for housing. In the years to follow EG earned the designation of the fastest growing municipality in Canada but this was based on percentages not the actual number of new homes. The net new high school students this “boom” created was relatively small. And in the years since, growth has slowed to a trickle.

It’s important to note that new homes don’t tend to yield high school age kids. I saw tons of data to support this over my time as Chair of the Board’s Property Management Committee. The professionals who track new school needs, have incredibly precise models to predict the exact number of new students each and every subdivision will generate and use this to analyse where the greatest student accommodation needs will be. For anyone to imply that the Board’s Capital Strategy is not already data driven is either naïve or misleading.

So how do we get a high school in East Gwillimbury?

First, let’s learn from the past and not see another high school slip through our fingers due to lack of servicing. In my role as Councillor, I have repeatedly stressed the importance of ensuring that we do not give away all our servicing allocation to new homes but that some is held back for the amenities that need to go with a growing community – schools, hospitals, employment, shops and services, etc.

Secondly, let’s understand how new schools are funded so that we can advocate appropriately.

During my time on the school board, we opened dozens of new schools, including 6 or 7 new high schools and none of them were because of a petition or local councillors being “loud” or “creative”. It was always based on the numbers. Long term numbers. Numbers that showed what was coming in the form of new development and how it would affect all surrounding schools.  That was balanced against the needs elsewhere in the board so that the ask to the province was the business cases with the greatest need, where we didn’t have enough spots for current students.

It was never about where a municipal boundary ran. Students crossed municipal boundaries all across the region everyday to attend their designated school, always have, always will. Thousands more cross municipal boundaries to attend a school that is better suited to their needs – such as French Immersion, SHSM, sports, special education, arts, etc. Allowing students to attend the best school for them, regardless of where they live.

Each year the Board looked at its data predicting student enrolment numbers and revised its Capital Strategy to plan ahead for where new schools would be needed. Sometimes specific programs like French Immersion would be shifted to help relieve pressure on a growing school or help a school where the student population was in decline. Sometimes boundaries had to move to ensure that all schools were at capacity so that the Board could make a case to the province to fund a new school.

While I was on the Board, I would see our staff present detailed business cases to the Province to fund 3 – 5 new schools in areas where existing schools were bursting at the seams.  The province would usually only approve 1 or 2 and staff would scramble to figure out where all these students would go until they could apply again the following year. The focus was on ensuring every student had a seat. Some years we were left shaking our heads, the need for new schools was so great yet the province wouldn’t give us the funding we needed. As Chair of the Board and VP of the Trustees’ Association, I met with Ministers of Education and even a premier or two, to make the case for why we desperately needed funding for new schools in growing areas.

Let me be clear: it is the school board staff that are at the forefront of advocating with the province for funding for new schools. Not local Trustees, and certainly not Town Councillors. The Town's role is simply to ensure parcels of land are set aside in development applications to accommodate the number schools the School Boards feel they will need, to ensure there is enough servicing allocation to accommodate the new schools, and, sometimes, partnering with the school board for shared municipal amenities.

There’s no question that EG wants a high school to call its own. From long before I was on Council there was talk of shared municipal space, like a theatre or a lit turf field. Everyone I talk to would love to see this addition to our community.

Things to Keep In Mind

Busing

It’s not about busing – because our current high schools are so close to EG, the amount of time spent on busing would be virtually unchanged.

Most of the time kids spend on a bus is picking up other students until the bus is full. Shaving a minute or two off the final leg of the trip will make little difference to the total ride time.

And it’s not about walking:  students in the new Queensville subdivision would be able to walk to a high school if it was nearby, but what happens to the existing residents in Harvest Hills who walk to Denison? Do they now get bussed to Queensville?

Programming 

Our kids are so lucky to enjoy the quality of programming a big school like Huron can offer – Football, shop classes (SHSM), Arts, French Immersion.

My experience with small high schools that can only offer a limited program, is that some students will choose to go elsewhere to get the programming they want, so the school gets even smaller, offering even less to the remaining students, and more students leave……the cycle continues. A small high school would offer our kids less than what they are getting now at the larger schools in Newmarket.

So, while there are so many reasons for EG to want its own high school, let’s be patient until we have the student population to warrant a school big enough to offer our kids plenty of programs to serve their diverse needs. Rushing it may lead to the unintended consequence of getting us a school that won’t provide the level of programming our kids currently enjoy in Newmarket. And for most of our students there would be little to no change in their commute times.

The bottom line is that the school board needs to be able to make a data-driven business case for why a high school is needed in EG. When I met with their planners last year, they showed me their data. We're not there yet. But we will be soon enough. 

As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Advocating for something just because it seems popular without understanding the unintended consequences, is a dangerous thing.

That’s why experience matters. Being informed matters.