More than 100 elementary school children are being forced to relocate after trustees announced their school had exceeded capacity.
Parents and students from McKee Public School, just north of Yonge Street and Finch Avenue, were told that overcrowding prompted the boundary changes. Their children will be moved to Finch Public School, near Bayview Avenue and Finch Avenue, in September, much to the dismay of parents.
“What was really upsetting was the way the trustee and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) handled everything,” said Anu Gupta, whose 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter fall within the new boundaries. “We were given six months’ notice. They’re being kicked out with no consideration.”
Gupta, alongside other parents, proposed building portables as one method to ease enrolment pressures. However, McKee’s trustee Mari Rutka disagreed and said that with the current 744 students at the school, there is not enough space.
“The problem with McKee is that it has a very small schoolyard,” Rutka said. “The yard really can’t take anymore portables. If we put in more, there won’t be any room for the children to play.”
Many families moved into the area solely to be within McKee’s boundaries, including Gupta, who said that in order to attend McKee she could not buy a condo built after 2003.
“I had to do my due diligence to ensure the building I bought in would let my kids go to McKee,” said the single mother. “That had a premium: I paid $20,000 more for my kids to go to McKee only to find out a little more than a year later they cannot go to the school anymore.”
Because of its high Education Quality and Accountability Office of Ontario (EQAO) test scores, McKee appeals to parents. Some even go as far as to forge documents, Rutka said.
“There are people that deliberately lie to get into the schools,” said Rutka. “They falsify documents. We have people willing to turn over guardianship of their children to someone else who lives in the area. There are stories of condo managers falsely verifying [families] live in the condo, when they don’t, for a little sum on the side. We’re not the RCMP. We can’t prove that,” she added.
Rutka explained that the problem stems from intensification along the Yonge-Sheppard corridor, originally intended to ease urban pressure on the downtown core. But the TDSB was not prepared for the increase in population, which has seen many young families steadily moving into the area for the past 25 years.
Further boundary changes will be facing the area in the coming months, Rutka added.
