D-Day is today…well actually tonight as the much anticipated vote for who goes to the new Ward 4 high school occurs.
Have you been here before? Does it ring a bell?
Did you participate in the Palermo accommodation committee sessions to have what paid consultants and taxpayers recommended ignored and replaced by a 10:30 motion that ruled the day? Do our trustees reflect on how that very motion protected FI leaving the English stream to be potentially crowded out of their own community school? Any reflection or regrets on passing a motion that seemed to have no due diligence done by the trustees who said ‘Yes’ without any further research other than taking the ‘presenters’ motion at face value. What business would ever implement a product line or service without background financial research to prove proposed statements.
Did you participate in the now famous south east accommodation PARC that resulted in signs all over south east with a militant community thumbing its nose at the HDSB, threatening legal action, and having the Ministry come in to review the transparency of the process and the conduct of the HDSB? Cyberspace can be so beautiful as the now famous critical Cooke Report is out there for all to see.
Were you one of the participants for those session or are you just one of the Ward 4 high school BRC members who now tell us and state publicly that they feel the effort was ‘a waste of time’, ‘a con’, ‘a hijack you always predicted’?
For all of you who have ever participated in what to many seems an ongoing charade that the public will have input or matter, we thank you. Without your efforts and participation we all could not be so openly critical because we would not have facts to base the outcry on.
D-Day is now, however, upon us, so we are asking…..what are your predictions on who will be protected or provided for, will a motion be presented to change the revised Option 5 recommendation allowing optional or flexible boundaries, will there be a hero or villian, and will trustees go with party lines or break rank?
Looking like a bit of a ‘deer in the headlights’ our trustees need to know, especially the new ones, that voting record is history in the making. Voting record is what is used by many to base public decisions and perceptions on. Voting record is what can help or hurt you when you seek reelection.
Maybe it won’t matter! Maybe the decision has already been made. Maybe it is just the fine line details that are still being worked out to specify what streets should be included as ‘optional’ or ‘flexible’. We have no idea because of course we are not part of the process.
So let us remind our trustees that just like the letter above and all the permanent records that now exist on the Internet serving as a historical record for the famous D-Day, so too will your decision today on what you support and how you conduct yourself.
Let us know what your predictions are on how our trustees will vote tonight.
Well Chitchat readers,
My prediction for the process tonight is that at least one Trustee will bring their own motion to the table in the eleventh hour. I suspect that now that all of the French Immersion parents have decided that they in fact would like a Walk-to school that the boundaries are going to divert all of the FI in Ward 4 to the new West Oaks high -school. the fact that we won’t then have room for the English Track won’t matter too much as these similar tactics have been done before and yes, gotten away with.
Forest Trail school was funded dual-track and the neighbourhood children were totally shut out from attending that school. The Ministry of Education did not follow the twelve million dollars they gave to HDSB to ensure that it was being used for which it was proposed . 6 Trustees voted for that recommendation to be changed, even after having a number of public meetings on this very topic. So here we are again, only this time the stakes are higher…a 30 million dollar school for a community which is short secondary placement options. When are the majority going to get a fair opportunity for provision of mandated English Track programs ????
Even though I am confident that amendments will be introduced and passed to make sure that students from Ecole Forest Trail will be attending the new high, I will still be attending the meeting tonight. I want to watch the faces of the trustees as they once again sacrifice the future of English Track students to satisfy the WANTS of the minority in the optional French Immersion program. It will be very interesting and sickening to hear the rationale that will be used to justify, yet again, preferential to FI.