How KPR’s Accommodation Review Policy Encourages us to Misunderstand Our Schools

To get some perspective on KPR’s modus operandus, let’s look outside the Board for a minute. At the same time as the Cramahe-Castleton review in 2007-08, an accommodations review for the Niagara District Secondary School was conducted in tandem with four area JK-8 feeder schools. The committee met over the course of 12 months for a total of more than 100 hours, including 3 general public consultation meetings, plus an “open house” meeting at each of the schools under review, and 9 non-public working group meetings. The administrative review facilitator’s report, which you can view here, also notes that “additionally, opportunities were provided to ARC members to visit schools in other jurisdictions that offer different school organizations,” including New York State, Thunder Bay and Port Dover (p.6-7). The Niagara ARC decision met with a petition, but it is clear that the process was far more advanced than KPR’s version. The idea, as promoted by the Ministry, was to avoid pitting one school against another in a simplistic process by encouraging School Boards to look at the bigger picture of larger demographic changes in a given area, whether shrinking or growing. The Niagara DSB had got the message, even if they couldn’t please all their constituents.

The Ministry specification of a minimum of four public meetings suggests that there may indeed be more required, particularly because one of the meetings is intended to be held at the conclusion of the process to present the report and recommendations to the public. The guidelines say nothing about how many non-public meetings may be held by the ARC. Indeed, in specifying that “all meetings shall be open to the public,” KPR’s policy diverges from standard practice among other Boards in Ontario. 

The “valuation process” specified by the 2006 Ministry guidelines was meant to encourage objectivity in considering schools in terms of four factors – value to the student, value to the community, value to the school board and value to the local economy. A list of core criteria by which to make the valuations (not “evaluations,” of course – evidently, that can only be done by schools, not to them) is given, which individual Boards may choose to tailor to their specific needs. KPR, reluctant to give up its control over its operations to actual community members, wrote their policy so as to cram “community” and “economy” into one factor and relegate it to the bottom of the list. 

Yet “community” and “economy” are plainly not the same considerations. The only common criteria in both the community and economy lists is “value of the school if it is the only school in the community” (p.4) - all other factors are different. A key item under “economy” which should be noted in this case is the extent to which the school in question “attracts or retains families in the community.”

In KPR’s document B.A. 1.2.1 Appendix C, which specifies the framework of the School Information Profiles, you can see how the four areas have been reduced to three, with community and economic value consolidated into one category, identified on the charts by the code “VC” (value to community). Although KPR has expanded on the Ministry’s listed factors to some extent, it has also failed to include some of them, and significantly re-worded others not to the end of achieving “further understanding of the schools” (p.3) but apparently to reduce the level of understanding possible .

The “VS” (value to students) and “VB” (value to Board) lists consume three pages between them, while the “VC” list consumes one. In this way, the original intention of the Ministry guidelines to encourage a strong consideration of local economic issues and community issues in relation to the value to the Board was subverted by KPR. In addition, the “VB” items number only one fewer than the “VC” items, elevating the value to the Board almost to the level of the value to the students, in plain contradiction of the specified intent of the guidelines and KPR’s own policy document (BA 1.2.1, article 1.5), further distorting the accommodation review process toward a Board-centric perspective.

KPR didn’t have a secondary school version of these guidelines until very recently. Secondary schools had historically been largely immune to the kind of fluctuations in enrolment experienced by small elementary schools, and their proposed closings were much less often an issue. Because the Capital Needs Assessment of 2007 had suggested a secondary school review for the Peterborough area for 2014, KPR staff and Trustees thought they had better create a set of criteria specifically applicable to secondary schools. However, the document at which they arrived shows little evidence of deep consideration, as only a few phrases have been changed here and there to nominally adapt the policy to secondary schools. I will show in subsequent posts how basic concerns regarding enrolment in elementary schools have been distorted in KPR policy to create fictitious concerns regarding secondary schools.

But first, let's look at two important points at which KPR’s misrepresentation of Ministry guidelines come into play with regard to the Board’s devaluation of PCVS specifically.

First, “value of the school if it is the only school in the community” has simply been changed in KPR policy to “value if it is the only secondary school in the community” (KPR BA 1.2.1 Appendix C, p.5). The term “community” is deliberately vague in the guidelines, presumably with the aim of including a wide range of kinds of communities, from high-density urban populations to tiny rural hamlets. PCVS, as the only school of any kind within the most densely-populated part of Peterborough, occupies a special place which cannot be considered in the decision-making process at all if the guideline “only school in the community” is interpreted as “only secondary school in the city.”  

You may be appalled to learn that KPR’s policy document excludes entirely the factor of the extent to which a school “attracts or retains families in the community.” Given that proximity to schools is among the most important factors in a family’s decision of where to house themselves, it is difficult to fathom why this would be omitted from the policy.

Yet another key omission from KPR policy is the factor listed by the Ministry under “value to the student” as “extracurricular activities and student participation.” In the Ministry guidelines, this is a separate item from “the ability of the school grounds to support healthy physical activity and extra-curricular activity.” KPR’s version excludes entirely “extracurricular activities and student participation,” and instead focuses exclusively on the ability of the school grounds to support healthy physical and co-curricular activity.” Thus, the School Information Profile format established by KPR makes it impossible to place value on extra-curricular activities and student participation facilitated by the institution itself and its location within the community.

The availability of community space beyond the immediate grounds of a school, once a key factor in school-building decisions which resulted in the creation of schools in the center of urban areas, is completely disregarded by KPR policy. In other words, the prominent value once placed on a central location by educational administrators has been erased from the equation entirely, thereby excluding consideration of the very aspects of PCVS which have made it so successful an institution decade after decade.

One further peculiarity in KPR's policy is the fact that minimum time-frames as specified by Queen’s Park are turned into fixed time-frames, with no rationale provided whatsoever. The inevitable result of this policy is rushed decisions.

These areas of discrepancy help explain why not only the recent review of secondary and intermediate schools was flawed, but why any ARC struck by KPR is likely to be ineffective in making decisions, and their recommendations likely to be the subject of petitions for administrative review.

Tonight We’re Going to Govern Like It’s 1999

One of the strange paradoxes of the attitudes towards physical facilities that arose with the Harris “Common Sense Revolution” is that construction and maintenance concerns took center stage when it came to making decisions about educational institutions, yet the positive educational benefits actually attributable to buildings were ignored.

Trent University is a case in point.

Gzowski College at Trent, featuring poured concrete walls and floors, immovable desks, automatic lights that shut off spontaneously in the middle of classes, and a Tim Hortons take-out with food-court tables for a common space

Peter Robinson and Catherine Parr Traill colleges were closed, supposedly because “we couldn’t afford them,” and funds redirected to the creation of the bizarre concrete-and-glass monstrosity of Gzowski College, whose every detail of design undermines the educational process. 

Scott House at Catherine Parr Traill College, blessed with beautiful, comfortable Junior and Senior Common Rooms

Hobbs Memorial Library at Peter Robinson College

  

What are the former campuses of Peter Robinson and Traill colleges used for now? They remain adjuncts to the university, still housing students and offices in various capacities – similar to the way KPR envisions the future for PCVS. In other words, they are still de facto parts of the institution. After all, what else could these campuses really be used for? But they now occupy a very marginal position in an otherwise highly homogenized institution, rather than a pivotal position in a diverse collective.

Sadleir House, former home of the History Department at Trent, now an independent community center

And to add insult to injury, we lost the connection the colleges maintained to Peter Robinson and Catherine Parr Traill themselves, pivotal figures in Peterborough history.

Catherine Parr Traill with her daughters and granddaughter at Stony Lake in 1899, a few days before the end of her life

The Harris government put the cart before the horse, determining education policy based on capital and maintenance expenses for the physical plants themselves, in spite of the fact that, as the KPR budget shows, operations expenses amount to less than 15% of the total cost of education. The result has been an extended series of foolish decisions.

The Liberals supposedly “strengthened” and “fixed” the funding formulas, but because they continued to be inflexible and inequitable in many areas, questionable and contentious school closings continued to be a problem. This 2005 research paper analyzes school closure conflicts and their sources in school board organization. In conclusion, the author observes that “most school boards in closure decisions have framed the issue not as economically motivated decisions but as a move to improve the quality of education.” This strategy, however, it is also observed, “is more likely to lead to more intractable legal and political conflicts if and when communities uncover the boards’ deceptive tactics.”

Sound familiar?

In 2006, the Ministry of Education revised its accommodation review guidelines, presumably in hopes of creating a fairer and more sensible process of rationalizing educational resources. School boards were obliged to revise their own policies regarding the way Accommodation Review Committees, or ARCs, were to provide response to specific school closing decisions, primarily of small elementary schools. The 2006 guidelines are here. They're not hard to read. Give them a try. See if you can do better than the KPR Trustees and administrators at understanding what they mean.

The guidelines call for a “School Valuation Process” by which committee members – a selection of interested parties from the school, the local community and the Board – attempt to achieve an objective view of each school considered for closing and make the best decision possible. Typically, such reviews would end up pitting one vulnerable school against another, creating antagonism between sides. A solid consultation process, it was felt, would help to alleviate the tensions and provide a greater sense of accountability.

At KPR, however, neither Trustees nor staff seemed to feel it particularly urgent to significantly revise their own policy on the matter. A nominal policy compliance was adopted, minimizing the impact of the Ministry’s intentions. Accommodation Review Committees were still conceived as short-lived groups meant to provide feedback from the families immediately involved in a school closure proposal by the Board. At KPR, ARCs were to remain only a public assembly holding a maximum of four meetings to provide response to a decision already made by Board staff.

Other Boards took the Ministry’s intentions more seriously, providing in their policies for a genuine public working group brainstorming and evaluating alternatives regarding potential school closings via a long process of working group meetings, research sessions, and at least four clearly organized public information meetings at which the committees exchanged ideas and information with the interested public.

Predictably, with attitudes such as that of KPR still prevalent in parts of Ontario, contentious school closings continued, and the Ministry received more petitions for review, even following the updated guidelines. One of them was right here in KPR.

In 2007-08, a KPR ARC considering the consolidation of two small rural elementary schools, Cramahe and Castleton, resulted in discontent among small communities not dissimilar in nature from what we're seeing today, but on a much smaller scale. The Ministry received a petition for administrative review, and the facilitator wrote in her report that the KPR policy of making all meetings public was “commendable” (p.15), but notes the problems which arose due to a lack of clarity as to how the public is meant to be involved, which resulted in repetitive discussions that detracted from the decision-making process and raised emotional levels unnecessarily.

Many members of the Cramahe-Castleon ARC felt that the decision had been pre-determined and that the Board had knowingly withheld information and given the committee members a false impression of the situation in order to make sure the group wouldn’t really be able to do what they perceived their job to be – i.e. to come up with better ideas than the bean-counters as to how the communities should proceed with their schools. The problem was, the process simply didn’t allow for it. A petition for review was almost inevitable, even though in the end the facilitator recommended sticking with the decision that the Board had made.

The facilitator, you may note, made the observation that KPR’s policy is a model of “plain language.” In her haste to complete the report, she mistook overly-simplistic policy, which discouraged any attempt at sophisticated analysis, for “plain language,” just as she mistook the remnant of old policy requiring only public meetings as "commendable."

The truth is that KPR policy didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now. It was barely revised just last year according to the new 2009 guidelines, which you can view here.

You can look at the draft-in-progress here, and the revised, current version of KPR policy on accommodation reviews here, here, and here (policy, procedures, and school valuation).

 In the next few posts I’ll explain what went wrong and why.