The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is in the midst of its greatest review since two boards were amalgamated in 1998.
For about 15 years, it is known that he needed to deal with the mixture of programs and degree configurations that he inherited from those days, but never really addressed, and finally launched his review of the primary schools almost a year ago.
“At this time, on each front, we are extending too thin, trying to do programs that were part of a mosaic,” said OCDSB Education, Pino Buffone. “We never really create the quilt that needs to execute programs solidly.”
But since the maps of the boundaries proposed for 123 schools were released on February 28 that show families how the new quilt is joining, hundreds of parents now say that the Board is flying to school communities so that it makes no sense.
Parents are organizing demonstrations and questioning the method used. Some have even registered children in other meetings for September. The Board is responding to the pressure and already reviewing some parts of the plan.
In a high level, OCDSB wants almost all schools in the district to offer both immersion in French and English, and eliminate alternative and medium immersion programs. For some children, the special help would change to the neighborhood schools.
“Do less, better,” Buffone said.
It seems contradictory that for autumn 2026, OCDSB will have approximately the same number of schools that operate with excess capacity as now. Another 13 would still be less than 60 percent full. Some schools would experience large swings from being excessive to low capacity, or vice versa.
Some children would have to change schools after grade 3, or go through their old school and cross the main arterial roads to another further. Schools with toilets in the size of Kinder would have to be adapted to accommodate adolescents. Parents would take care of the logistics of having children in two schools, or would lose their subsequent attention situations.
To make sense, it should consider what priority it exceeded others when the planners of the School Board sat to draw the maps.
Fifteen schools only in English
Buffone said that the “brilliant star” of the Board is to offer French immersion in each primary school, something that said it would make OCDSB unique among the ontarium boards.
The other way of seeing that goal has been articulated less in recent weeks: the OCDSB would no longer have 15 schools of one track that offer only English with central French.
By tracking almost all schools, the Board aims to balance some serious socioeconomic inequalities that have spent years studying. That is the main driver of this review, Buffone said.
The Board data shows that its English program teaches a disproportionate number of children from low -income households whose first language is not English or have special education needs.
Schools only in English, in particular, are “perpetuating de facto transmission and reinforce the inequalities between schools and students,” said the human rights and capital advisor in a report in January 2024. Schools must offer the same standard programs, the advisor urged.
French immersion, on the other hand, emerged organically for many years to meet demand and had led to suggestions of a two -level system within the Board. It is more likely that French immersion students come from families born in Canada and have higher family income.
“That notion of wealth linked to French is more historical than reality at this time,” Buffone said. “Our newcomers want their children to learn English and French.”
You cannot deny the demand for French immersion is unusually strong in the capital city. Over time, the registration trends of the Board began to lean.
These days, 65 percent of children in grade 1 enroll in French immersion, and 30 percent choose English with central French. Less than 100 choose the alternative program that will probably be eliminated.
By eighth grade, however, the student population is registered almost equally in French immersion and English.
Allowing students to change between the two programs in a single school will be a benefit, Buffone said. Even in a family, a brother can flourish in French immersion, while another does not, he added.
The oldest most affected neighborhoods
Therefore, some of the most important changes are reaching the 15 schools that are currently only English.
The Public School of Cambridge in Chinatown, for example, would jump from a capacity of 28 % to three quarters full.
While the planners sat with that general objective of offering French immersion everywhere, they knew another key part of the equation: no school would close. Ontario has had a moratorium in school closures since 2017.
On March 4, OCDSB general manager, Karyn Ostophuk, told the trusts how difficult it was to draw lines for schools to offer immersion in French and English, but still will be “healthy and viable.”
The most complicated areas, he said, were in the oldest neighborhoods in Ottawa that have more school spaces than students.
That is why the changes are more dramatic in places such as Alta Vista and Elmvale Acres, South Keys, Carlingwood, Centrown, along with rural peoples such as Grelyy and North Gower.
And they are quite dramatic.
As an example, Arch Street Public School near the Canterbury Recreation Complex is currently a school only in English with a capacity of 44 percent. The Junior Infantes Garden offers until grade 8, and almost all its students come from low -income families.
Under the new maps, he would win 144 students in September 2026, and offered only Junior Garden to Grade 3, but both in French and English. It would be combined with Hawthorne’s public school, offering grades 4 to 8.
Meanwhile, the Public Public School of North Gower/Marlborough will pass from a capacity of 46 percent to 108 percent and will only offer Junior Garden to Grade 3, while its new associated school, Kars on the Rideau, will offer only one degree 4 to 8 and will fall from 85 percent to 44 % complete. North Gower would grow by 168 students, while Kars in Rideau would lose 308 students.
Some schools feel more full than others to their capacity, Ostafichuk explained, and many of them with excess capacity will eliminate alternative immersion students or immersion media over time.
‘He lost a lot of confidence in the Board’
When Natalee Lewis logged in a couple of weeks ago to verify the limit changes, I did not expect surprises.
His daughter lives six minutes walk from the colorful red door that enters every morning in the patio of kindergarten of the Public School of Roberta Bondar. There is a game structure outside and a new nursery is being built, attached to school.
“I put my direction and I thought: ‘There must be something wrong,” Lewis said.
Lewis’s daughter would be sent to the Robert Bateman public school, through Four-Carry Conroy Road, while Roberta Bondar’s public school would be adapted to serve only grades 7 and 8, instead of a Junior infant garden until grade 8.
Since then, Lewis has been dragged by the problem and has become a defender of the parents in a way he never expected. She belongs to a WhatsApp group of several hundred parents, approaches her MPP and attends consultations and administration meetings.
Everyone agrees with the general principles, Lewis said, but the limit changes made so little sense, a father asked in a recent consultation if artificial intelligence had been used.
“I feel that our children are being treated as numbers,” said Lewis, pointing out that there is little consideration how families will administer the logistics of their days or how children’s mental health is affected.
Instead of flying all school communities throughout the city, Lewis said the Board should spend money to add resources and renew schools such as the nearby Dunlop public school, a school only in English in South Keys that has a capacity of 34 percent. Then, parents would choose to send their children there, he said.
But when trying to create equity, the Board is creating other inequalities, he said. Roberta Bondar organizes a well -established breakfast program and has many low -income families, he said. They will not have vehicles or have flexible jobs to take their children to the schools farther.
Meanwhile, Lewis said parents’ defenders are trying to make holes in the Board methodology. The OCDSB had closed the schools in 2017 based in part on the investigation that showed that intermediate schools were not the most effective configuration.
Lewis wants to see the evidence of what the Board is doing now.
“They consulted on the ideology of the plan, but they did not consult the cause and effect of the plan,” he said. “And that’s where I think we have lost a lot of confidence on the board.”
Called to delay vote
The director of Education has already decided to visit some of the most controversial limits changes.
Buffone told CBC News that he has asked the planners to take another look at the configurations in which a junior infant garden to the school of grade 3 would be associated with a second school that offers only grades 4 to 8.
The OCDSB has more consultations and planned meetings, but parents are organizing their own protests.
Lewis said that, ultimately, parents want trusts to delay the approval of the plan on April 29 and take more time given the ramifications for so many families.
“Sit and talk about what we can do to achieve what everyone wants,” he said.
But since it is already registration time, some parents are opting not to send their four -year -old children to a school, only to be transferred to a different OCDSB school for the Senior infants garden.
Some are changing the tables.
That could cause different problems for the largest school board in Ottawa. His inscription is stagnant, while the other three in Ottawa are seeing their numbers grow.
But Buffone said that OCDSB will have a much better base in the long term if it can offer programs that parents want in each school, especially the immersion in French. He said he is open to the comments that are coming.
“It is a difficult transition, but they are construction blocks for a brighter future,” said Buffone.
