The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is in the midst of its biggest overhaul since two boards amalgamated back in 1998.
It’s known for some 15 years that it needed to deal with the mish mash of programs and grade configurations it inherited from those days but never really addressed, and finally launched its review of elementary schools almost a year ago.
“Right now – on every front – we’re spreading ourselves too thin, trying to do programs that were part of a patchwork,” OCDSB education director Pino Buffone explained. “We never really built the quilt that needs to run programs solidly.”
But since maps of proposed boundaries for 123 schools were released on Feb. 28 showing families how the new quilt is being stitched together, hundreds of parents now say the board is blowing up school communities in ways that don’t make sense.
Parents are organizing rallies and questioning the method used. A few have even registered children in other boards for September. The board is responding to the pressure and already revisiting some parts of the plan.
At a high level, the OCDSB wants almost every school in the district to offer both French immersion and English, and to phase out the alternative and middle immersion programs. For some kids, special help would shift into neighbourhood schools.
“Do less, better,” as Buffone put it.
It does seem counterintuitive that by fall 2026, OCDSB will have about the same number of schools operating at over-capacity as it does now. Another 13 would still be less than 60 per cent full. Some schools would experience big swings from being over-capacity to under-capacity, or vice versa.
Some kids would have to switch schools after Grade 3, or walk past their old school and cross major arterial roads to another further away. Schools with kinder-sized toilets would need to be retrofitted to accommodate teenagers. Parents would deal with the logistics of having children in two schools, or would lose their after-care situations.
For it to make sense, you have to consider which priority trumped others when planners at the school board sat down to redraw the maps.
Fifteen English-only schools
Buffone said the board’s “shining star” is to offer French immersion in every elementary school, something he said would make the OCDSB unique among boards in Ontario.
The other way to look at that goal has been less articulated in recent weeks: The OCDSB would no longer have 15 single-track schools that offer only English with core French.
By dual tracking almost every school, the board aims to balance some serious socio-economic inequities it has spent years studying. That is the top driver for this review, Buffone said.
The board’s data shows its English program teaches a disproportionate number of children from low-income households whose first language isn’t English, or who are have special education needs.
English-only schools, in particular, are “perpetuating de facto streaming and reinforcing inequities between schools and students,” the board’s human rights and equity advisor said in a report in January 2024. Schools should offer the same, standard programs, the advisor urged.
French immersion, on the other hand, cropped up organically over many years to meet demand and had led to suggestions of a two-tier system within the board. French immersion students are more likely to come from Canadian-born families and have higher family incomes.
“That notion of affluence tied to French is more historical than reality right now,” Buffone said. “Our newcomers, they want their children learning English and French.”
There’s no denying demand for French immersion is unusually strong in the capital city. Over time, the board’s enrolment trends began to tilt.
These days, 65 per cent of children in Grade 1 enrol in French immersion, and 30 per cent choose English with core French. Less than 100 choose the alternative program that’s likely to be phased out.
By Grade 8, however, the student population is enrolled almost equally in French immersion and English.
Allowing students to shift between the two programs in a single school will be a benefit, Buffone said. Even in one family, a sibling can flourish in French immersion while another doesn’t, he added.
Older neighbourhoods most affected
Some of the biggest changes are therefore coming to the 15 schools that are currently English-only.
Cambridge Public School in Chinatown, for instance, would jump from 28 per cent capacity to three-quarters full.
As planners sat down with that overarching goal to offer French immersion everywhere, they knew another key part of the equation: no school would close. Ontario has had a moratorium on school closures since 2017.
On March 4, OCDSB general manager Karyn Ostafichuk told trustees just how tough it was to draw lines so schools would offer both French immersion and English but still be “healthy and viable.”
The trickiest areas, she said, were in Ottawa’s older neighbourhoods that have more school spaces than students.
That’s why the changes are more dramatic in places like Alta Vista and Elmvale Acres, South Keys, Carlingwood, Centretown, along with rural villages like Greely and North Gower.
And they are quite dramatic.
As one example, Arch Street Public School near the Canterbury recreation complex is currently an English-only school at 44 per cent capacity. It offers junior kindergarten through Grade 8, and almost all of its students come from low income families.
Under the new maps, it would gain 144 students by September 2026, and offer only junior kindergarten to Grade 3 but in both French immersion and English. It would be paired with Hawthorne Public School, offering Grades 4 to 8.
Meanwhile, the rural North Gower/Marlborough Public School will go from 46 per cent capacity to 108 per cent and offer only junior kindergarten to Grade 3, while its new partner school, Kars on the Rideau, will offer only Grade 4 to Grade 8 and drop from 85 per cent to 44 per cent full. North Gower would grow by 168 students, while Kars on the Rideau would lose 308 students.
Some schools feel more full than others at capacity, Ostafichuk explained, and many of those at over-capacity will phase out alternative or middle French immersion students over time.
‘Lost a lot of trust in the board’
When Natalee Lewis logged on a couple of weeks ago to double-check the boundary changes, she didn’t expect any surprises.
Her daughter lives a six-minute walk from the colourful red door she enters every morning in the kindergarten yard at Roberta Bondar Public School. There’s a play structure outside and a new daycare is being built, attached to the school.
“I put my address in and and I thought, ‘There must be something wrong,'” Lewis said.
Lewis’s daughter would be sent to Robert Bateman Public School, across four-lane Conroy Road, while Roberta Bondar Public School would be retrofitted to serve only Grades 7 and 8, instead of junior kindergarten to Grade 8.
Since then, Lewis has been swept up by the issue and has become a parent advocate in a way she never expected. She belongs to a Whatsapp group of several hundred parents, is reaching out to her MPP, and is attending consultations and trustee meetings.
Everyone agrees with the overarching principles, Lewis said, but the boundary changes made so little sense, one parent asked at a recent consultation if artificial intelligence had been used.
“I feel like our children are being treated as numbers,” Lewis said. “There’s little regard to how families will manage the logistics of their days or how children’s mental health is being affected.”
Rather than blow up all school communities city-wide, Lewis said the board should spend money to add resources and renovate schools like nearby Dunlop Public School, an English-only school in South Keys that’s at 34 per cent capacity. Parents would then choose to send their kids there, she said.
But in trying to create equity, the board is creating other inequities, she said. Roberta Bondar hosts a well-established breakfast program and has many families on low incomes, she pointed out. They won’t own vehicles or have flexible jobs to take their children to schools further away.
Meanwhile, Lewis said parent advocates are trying to poke holes in the board’s methodology. The OCDSB had closed schools in 2017 based in part on research that showed middle schools were not the most effective configuration.
Lewis wants to see the evidence for what the board is doing now.
“They consulted on the ideology of the plan, but they didn’t consult on the cause and effect of the plan,” she said. “And that’s where I think we’ve lost a lot of trust in the board.”
Call to delay vote
Already, the education director has decided to revisit some of the most contentious boundary changes.
Buffone told CBC News he has asked planners to take yet another look at the configurations where a junior kindergarten to Grade 3 school would be partnered with a second school offering only Grades 4 to 8.
The OCDSB has more consultations and meetings planned — but parents are organizing their own protests.
Lewis said, ultimately, parents want trustees to delay approving the plan on April 29 and take more time given the ramifications for so many families.
“Let’s sit down and talk about what we can do to accomplish what everyone wants,” she said.
But given it’s already registration time, some parents are opting not to send their four-year-olds to one school, only to be transferred to a different OCDSB school for senior kindergarten.
A few are switching boards.
That could cause different problems for Ottawa’s biggest school board. Its enrolment is stagnant, while the three others in Ottawa are seeing their numbers grow.
But Buffone said the OCDSB will be on far better footing long-term if it can offer programs parents want in every school, especially French immersion. He said he’s open to the feedback that’s coming in.
“It’s a difficult transition, but it’s building blocks for a brighter future,” Buffone said.
