What a school’s ‘descent into chaos’ says about the state of education in Ontario

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Jordan Heath Rawlings High school is stressful enough on its own. There’s academics, clicks, social pressures, bullying, fitting in, standing out, extracurricular stuff, homework, planning for post-secondary applications, and on and on. Maybe you still have nightmares about it. That’s how indelible it is for some people. When a Toronto area high school, all but burned to the ground in a fire before the pandemic, things got even more stressful and not just for those students. You see they needed some place to learn when in-person classes resumed and the school board decided that they could share another high school nearby with a student population that wasn’t filling its own building. This is where things began to truly go off the rails. Today’s episode is about just what happens when you jam too many students and teachers and support staff into one building. When you ignore the overwhelming plea from kids and adults alike, that this is going to be a disaster. And this is about what you get when you have a school board that is rich in valuable empty property, that it is not allowed to sell and also incredibly poor when it comes to the cash required to make things actually work inside the schools. This is the story of the York Memorial High School disaster, and I don’t use that term lightly.

I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Danielle Groen is a writer and editor based in Toronto. She wrote this piece called Epic Fail for Toronto Life. Hey Danielle.

Danielle Groen Hi, Jordan.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Tell me about York Memorial Collegiate Institute. What was it? What happened there back in May of 2019?

Danielle Groen Well, York Memorial is a school in Northwest Toronto and on May 6th, 2019, which was actually the exact 90th anniversary of the school. Something caught fire in the auditorium on the second floor, and initially it wasn’t a huge fire and responders were able to put it out within a couple hours. Teachers and students assumed they’d be back in class the next day. But then overnight, another fire broke out, and this one was enormous. I mean, six alarm, there were 150 firefighters on the scene. They had aerial water cannons and excavation equipment. And by the time that fire was out, the school’s roof was gone. Parts of the third floor had had collapsed into the basement. The basement was flooded. The front exterior was heavily damaged and everything left behind by the students and teachers their laptops, textbooks, backpacks. It had all burned.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How many students and teachers are we talking about here? Gimme a sense of the size of the school.

Danielle Groen The school was about 900 kids and teachers.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And what did the school board do in the wake of the fire? What did they do with those 900 kids and teachers?

Danielle Groen So York Memorial is on Eglington Avenue West at Keele and down Keele about 700 meters south. There was another high school called George Harvey, and so that’s where York Memorial staff and students reported the next morning, at least until about 11 o’clock, when the smoke that was wafting down from the burning school got so bad that the board had to cancel class and send everyone home. And so once it became clear that York Memorial’s building wasn’t salvageable, the TDSB decided that those 900 kids and teachers were gonna ride out the school year at George Harvey.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How prepared was George Harvey for that kind of influx of students? We hear a lot about crowded classrooms, and stuff in Toronto. How do you do that?

Danielle Groen Well, on paper it made a lot of sense. George Harvey is, is a big sprawling school. It was built in the early fifties and its student population had dropped over the past 10 years from 900 to just about 500 kids. I mean, they, they weren’t the only ones in the building. George Harvey had a daycare, it had an adult education program, community services provider, but 500 kids is half the TDSB’s ideal size for high school. And so the board figured there was plenty of space to add another 800 students. That just wasn’t exactly the case.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Tell me about that. What happens next when they’re consolidated?

Danielle Groen So there’s been a decent amount of media coverage, both just after the fire and, and then again over this past school year about a rivalry between the two schools. And certainly when the schools were brought together in May, 2019, there was a lot of tension. But I don’t get the sense from speaking to both teachers and students that the school rivalry was at the heart of that. Instead, you had all these students and staff from York Memorial who were absolutely shell-shocked. Their school had just burned down. They’d lost a ton of stuff. And there seemed to be an expectation for the board that they just show up somewhere new and attend class or teach their lessons as usual, even though they didn’t actually have any resources or books or, or lesson plans to do that with. And then from George Harvey’s perspective, the size of the school essentially tripled overnight. You know, stairwells were jammed with kids. Bus stops were packed and it was hot and crowded and, you know, there was a lot of frustration. And then there were also issues with George Harveys facilities, like a lot of schools across the TDSB, parts of George Harvey had fallen into serious disrepair. You know, building had water damage, it had mold, there were ventilation issues, the windows had been painted shut. And so for weeks you had parents and students from both schools pleading with the board for another solution. And there was a school, a few kilometres west called Scarlet Heights that was sitting vacant. And so the TDSB agreed that they could send staff and students from York Memorial there and you know, as a bonus, they could use about $1.8 million in insurance money from the flyer to spruce up Scarlet Heights, which would make it more valuable if the TDSB cited to sell it, you know, for example, to the Catholic School Board, which had already expressed interest in the property.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Okay, so great. That all worked out and problem solved, right?

Danielle Groen Yeah, problem solved. So in September, 2019, York Memorial students and teachers showed up to this spruced up Scarlet Heights, and, and George Harvey students and teachers returned to a school that was familiar, and small and everyone felt really good about this arrangement. Accept the TDSB. So for some context, two years earlier than Premier Kathleen Wynn, who is under pressure, I think from both parents and from the conservative opposition, she issued a moratorium on closing schools. And the TDSB owns a lot of properties, but 600 schools, and most of them are pretty large. And you know, they were built 60 years ago, at least for boomers and boomer’s children, and now they’re sitting under capacity because demographics have changed and there aren’t as many kids. So one in five schools in Toronto were already underpopulated. Before Covid hit and during the pandemic, enrolment dropped further. You know, kids left, public education, families left the city. Immigration slowed down. When schools are underpopulated. It affects programming, right? Like if only five students sign up for a civics class or, or an extracurricular, it’s unlikely to run. From the board’s perspective, it’s also significantly cheaper to run one school at full capacity than it is to run several underpopulated schools. But the TDSB’s hands are tied, you know, they can’t close those schools and they can’t distribute students elsewhere. So when York Memorial went up in smoke. The TDSB suddenly had this rare opportunity. I mean, those kids had to go somewhere and where better than an underpopulated George Harvey that was just down the street. And so I think that’s maybe why just a few months after they agreed to separate the two schools, the board started talking about consolidating them permanently at George Harvey, and there was a flurry of meetings and consultations and information sessions where people in the community really stressed their opposition. And then, you know, we get to March, 2020 and obviously everything stopped and everyone started learning from home. But by early 2021, the board was back at it. Parents and teachers and students, they sent emails to the TDSB and to its trustees. They gave you know, tearful Zoom speeches. They organized marches to the TDSB headquarters and they said, look, York Memorial’s going to be rebuilt in 2026. Let’s just keep the status quo until both schools can move into this new building together. They said, You know, we’re in the midst of a pandemic still. We need stability and structure.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And space, presumably?

Danielle Groen And space. And they said there are a lot of repairs that need to be done at George Harvey, and we don’t know how that can happen in a year. And the TDSB said, okay, thanks for your input, but we’re on it. And there’s plenty of time to get this right. And then in June, 2021 on the board’s recommendation, the 18 TDSB trustees voted unanimously for this consolidation to go ahead.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And that takes us up to last fall. And I think that context is really important, and especially because we’re gonna get to the big picture in a bit about education in the biggest city in the country, specifically. It’s now fall of 2022. They’ve had lots of time to plan. They’ve heard all the parental concerns school opens, consolidated again. And what happens?

Danielle Groen So the names get a little tricky here. And I just wanna say that this is still the George Harvey building. But the board decided that it, it would be called York Memorial from now on because that name is, is a tribute to the Canadian War debt. They wanted to keep that right.

Jordan Heath Rawlings But theoretically they’re reopening York Memorial at some point, right?

Danielle Groen Yes. In 2026, there is meant to be a brand new building, you know, where they’ve repaired the old fire site, and this is going to be big and spiffy and brand new. But instead of waiting to bring both schools together at that time, they decided to merge them into the George Harvey building in 2022. And that first day of school in September was chaos. You know, the building doesn’t have a lot of open spaces. The the foyer is narrow. The hallways are narrow, and so they were just clogged with what’s now 1300 kids. But there were also shockingly few places for those kids to go. So the board had not finished preparations for the school in time, and several really critical spaces were closed. The auditorium was getting repairs to its sound system, so it was closed. There was a new floor going into the dance room, so it was closed. The cafeteria was missing equipment so it was closed. And the gym was closed because when the board moved over all these brand new desks and chairs and tables that they had bought for Scarlet Heights, they just jammed George Harvey’s old furniture into the gym. So you had this massive 7,000 square foot gym that was covered with stacks and stacks of old furniture that stretched across the entire gymnasium. With this narrow path that cut down the middle. And all these closures meant that the school couldn’t run a welcome assembly. It couldn’t do lunch, it couldn’t run intramural sports. The George Harvey teachers and the York Memorial teachers were never actually introduced to each other. The students weren’t brought together in any way. There were boxes that were still unpacked. The ventilation issues in the classroom hadn’t been dealt with, which isn’t great in an un-air conditioned school coming out of a pandemic. And pretty quickly, cuz it was hot in September, you had students fainting or throwing up in class because the air circulation inside was so bad and people were stunned that this was the condition of the school and they were anchored.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Who are the students that are at this school? You know, what’s it like in the area? And what did you hear from those students about what it was like being at this school?

Danielle Groen So I think it’s important to point out that students across the city have had an incredibly difficult time over the past three years. I mean, September, 2022 was the first time any of them were back full-time in schools because they’d had all this back and forth hybrid learning. Ontario schools had been closed for at least 22 weeks, which is more than any other province and it weighed on kids. But as with everything in the pandemic, that weight wasn’t distributed equally. And we know that covid hit hardest in lower income racialized neighbourhoods like York Southwestern, which is where York Memorial is located. I mean, one veteran teacher at the school told me she’s never seen a mental health situation like that. She said among her students, being mentally healthy isn’t the norm anymore. It’s the exception. You know, across Toronto, we’ve seen those struggles escalate into violence. The TDSB is about to have its most violent year on record, so the return to school has been challenging for all students and principals have been pleading with the board for more resources, more mental health supports, more staff. But at York Memorial, on top of all that, Students had to deal with school that was just woefully unprepared for them.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What about safety issues? You touched on this a little bit they’re coming out of a pandemic. They’re all crowded together. You mentioned the ventilation is poor, the stairways are crowded. Did students feel safe at the school? Did teachers feel safe at the school?

Danielle Groen No. It took weeks for movers to finally come home, the old furniture away. So York Memorial could have a usable gym. You know, as we mentioned, air circulation was bad. The bathrooms had been outfitted for all these new students, so there were plumbing problems. Classroom phones were broken, so staff couldn’t communicate with the office. They couldn’t summon help. Dozens of teachers hadn’t been given keys to the building, so they could not lock their rooms. But some of the doors like to the art and dance studios, to the staff bathrooms didn’t even have lock. And then there were classrooms that didn’t actually have doors. There was a hallway on the second floor that had been divided with those thick fabric panels that are used in office cubicles. And the entrances were just openings. So you had five classrooms that were essentially doorless cubicles, which is a big safety concern. Because of all these issues, teachers started filling out health and safety concern forms, but they weren’t hearing anything back from the TDSB. Nothing was getting fixed. And I think it compounded the feeling in the building that these students weren’t important and then that profound sense of un-importance started to give way to more anger. And so a small minority of the students, you know, maybe between 50 to a hundred from both schools responded by lashing out. They were pushing and shoving in the hallways. And then there were more and more fights, every week at first. And then as we get into October, 2022, every few days, those fights circulated all over social media. Sometimes teachers got caught up in them too. Some black students told me that they began to feel singled out that teachers would avoid them in the hallways or, or wouldn’t meet their eye in the classroom. They also felt targeted by the police who showed up more and more often at the school. Teachers told me that they felt the school’s administration couldn’t make disciplines stick and the instigators would be back in class the next day. And partly that’s because there was this revolving door of administrators within the first six weeks of the school year, 12 administrators cycled through the building, including the principal and several vice principals who went on stress leave or medical leave. And so teachers sent in more health and safety forms to the board. Over a school year usually you’ve got maybe fewer than 10 in total, but over three months teachers at York Memorial submitted 88 forms and still nothing from the TDSB. So at the start of November, 14 teachers from York Memorial went on work refusal, which is an absolutely unprecedented number. And the board really struggled to find bodies to replace them. There’s a staffing shortage at the TDSB right now, and a lot of supply teachers have left to find better pay and more secure work outside of education. And so what that meant is that for weeks while the Ministry of Labor conducted this investigation, you had hundreds of students without teachers and without education. And some of those kids would go to the library and some would leave the building and some would hang around in the halls where fights continued to break out and police were frequent presence and, and parents started pulling their kids out of York Memorial and transferring them to schools nearby.

Jordan Heath Rawlings We’ll get to what, if any resolution might happen at York Memorial, but first, I mean, I wanted to talk to you about this because this is a very vivid example of a worst case scenario, but is the state that you’ve described of this school a one-off when you talk to people within the board, or is this kind of a systemic issue within the largest school board in Canada?

Danielle Groen Oh, this is a systemic issue. You know, this isn’t the only school facing considerable challenges in its facilities. Schools are old and they are falling apart, and the TDSB repair backlog is sitting at more than $4 billion. There are eight high schools in Toronto where it would cost less money to tear them down and start over again than it would to adequately repair them.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How did it get this bad? I mean, I know this could probably be an entire other episode of this podcast, but like this sounds to the point where, you know, you kind of widen your eyes and wonder what else is going on here? Is it just a lack of funding?

Danielle Groen Yes. the TDSB gets about 3 billion a year from the province, and that sounds like a lot, but it doesn’t even cover operating expenses. I mean, after you, you camp for salaries and maintenance costs and classroom supplies and IT, stuff like that. The board estimates that the provincial funding gap this year will be more than 220 million. That’s obviously not accounting for those $4 billion in repairs. Educational underfunding isn’t new in Toronto, but it is true that Doug Ford’s budget cut another 47 million from schools in 2023. And this summer the province is going to end its pandemic funding, which means the TDSB loses $31 million and it said that it’s going to be forced to cut nearly 500 jobs, including child and youth workers, social workers, educational assistances. I mean, these are the support staff who have the actual expertise to handle mental health concerns. You know, there are also limits on how the TDSB can raise its own cash. So the board doesn’t qualify for something called educational development charges, which are the fees that property developers pay to offset the pressure that new residents put on local schools. And, and as I mentioned, they can’t close schools that are under capacity and then sell off those buildings or land.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Why not? You mentioned that that was a Kathleen Wynn decision, but in your article you point out just how many of these buildings are sitting empty and like if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Doug Ford years in Ontario, it’s that property developers are really interested in this stuff.

Danielle Groen It’s not wildly popular. I mean, certainly parents don’t love having to send their kids further to a different school. But you know, Ontario’s school boards have lobbied the Ministry of Education to lift the moratorium. They did that again recently, and so far the Ministry of Education isn’t engaging in talks. You know, if they do lift it. I, I think more school consolidations will follow pretty quickly. In October, the board flagged 27 clusters of schools to assess for potential mergers, so I think it’ll happen again. One hopes that the province and the board has learned some lessons from this experience at York Memorial for the next time around.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So what happens now at York Memorial? Where do those complaints stand? What does the future hold? Or is it just like shut up and deal till 2026?

Danielle Groen Well, so there was a lot of of anger in the building. And so in very early December, you know, a couple dozen students decided to take matters into their own hands, and they staged a walkout. They marched to the nearest TDSB building, which happened to be right next to where the original York Memorial had burned down. And they had a list of demands. That included more resources for the school, improved conditions for the facilities, more staff, a permanent administrative team, no cops. And they also wanted, you know, investigation into some students’ experience of racism. And that walkup got a ton ton of media attention and it finally galvanized the TDSB to act. So within days, the board had posted 15 permanent contract positions at York Memorial. They brought in a new principal, two new vice principals, two new social workers, two new school-based safety monitors, a new child and youth worker. Of the 15 new teachers, 14 are racialized, as are the principal in both VPs. The repairs to the school are, are mostly finished. I mean, they finally held a welcome assembly for the students at the start of the second semester in February. You’ve got sports running again. I went to an assembly at York Memorial in the spring where the TDSB was clearly working very hard to project an image of school harmony. I mean, there were these giant LED letters at the back of the stage that spelled unity. Fights are down, the school is calmer. Things are definitely better. But as we discussed, you know, it’s a lot of money to fix problems that aren’t being experienced at York Memorial alone. And, there are a lot of schools across Toronto that are contending with these challenges in their facilities and with the mental health struggles of both its students and its staff.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Given the whole saga you’ve just described and also what it took to actually get some action on it, what does that say about what we are likely to see at schools in the future? You know, obviously it shouldn’t have needed to take that much, but if that’s what’s gonna work, maybe it just goes on.

Danielle Groen Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen that the board can be reactive but not proactive. They can chase crises, maybe not prevent them, and we are in a crisis. There’s been a real failure to grapple with the effects of the pandemic on students. Everyone I spoke with is sick to death of hearing that kids are resilient. Kids are struggling. I mean, you had students starting grade nine in September who completely missed out on middle school, and so academic performance has taken a hit across the grades, but there are major social skills that haven’t developed in addition to the considerable mental health issues. Teachers are burned out. They’re fleeing the board. They’re contending with their own issues. And they’re also teachers. You know, they’re not child psychologists, that’s not their expertise, but the support staff best positioned to deal with these issues are being cut. So everyone I spoke with, every parent, every student, every teacher, every expert said that schools need more resources and more funds, and obviously dealing with this situation isn’t cheap. But I think that, you know, we’ve seen the price of failing to deal with it is even higher. But beyond that, I think we’ve seen from the province that there continues to be a real emphasis on test scores and literacy levels and math outcomes, and it’s this back to basics agenda that the Ministry of Education has pushed in the last month. Again, and I, I obviously do not wanna discount the value of academic performance, but I wonder if going back is really the wisest move here. I mean, the pandemic forced a realignment for all of us that has led to big conversations about what the future needs to look like. And so there’s an opportunity here to have a much bigger conversation about the future of education. One that takes into account what students have gone through, what they need, and reimagines the skills that will best equip them for what’s ahead. And so I think the province might wanna strongly consider having those conversations. I think it would cost them far less in the long term.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Danielle, thank you for walking us through this and, at least things got better at one school.

Danielle Groen Thanks so much, Jordan.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Danielle Groen writing in Toronto Life. That was The Big Story. For more, you can head to The Big Story podcast.ca. You know that already. You can also find us on Twitter @TheBigStoryfpn. Come say Hi. Give us a follow. Maybe we’ll follow you back. If you say something nice, you can email us that email address is hello@TheBigStorypodcast.ca. A couple of our episodes last week came from Story Ideas sent in by listeners, so please. Send yours in, makes life easier for us, makes listening more fun for you. You can even call us, just leave us a voicemail. You don’t even have to send us a link or type anything. The phone number is (416)-935-5935 and of course you get The Big Story wherever you get podcasts. If it lets you review us, please do it. If you have a chance to tell a friend who could use an interesting Daily News podcast in their life, You know where to send them. And if you by any chance would like to hear this podcast without any advertisements, you can subscribe to The Big Story Plus on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.

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