Board expected to make final decision on boundary changes in March Continued from page 1 5 · Thursday, February 16, 2012 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.insideHALTON.com schools. Each school has two parents/guardians on the committee, totalling 16, as selected by their school parent council. The BRC reviewed criteria as set out in the School Boundary Review procedure and will use that when assessing boundary scenarios. "What we're trying to do is look at some options that might manage the over-utilization of some of our schools in this area. That's the driver from a long-term accommodation plan where we've got 10-13 plus portables on a site or on a couple sites. So that's what starts our work," said associate director Jeff Blackwell. Some of the criteria includes program viability, fiscal responsibility, proximity to schools, accommodation, balance of enrollment in each school, the grandfathering of students in the graduating class, the number of school moves students have experienced and stable, longterm boundaries to avoid frequent changes, among others. Approximately 11 of the 21 scenarios have been reviewed thus far, including three at Monday's meeting -- 16, 18 and 21, which are available for viewing on the HDSB website. "When we look at scenarios, we certainly look at the accommodation numbers and boundaries and could we give some relief if we re-directed students to school A or school B?" said Blackwell. "Then we put on the next lens, which is if we direct the students and it's English or it's French or it's dual track, do we have the viable numbers for programs? "So (as) the students go through the years, there's a good cohort of students going from Grades 1-8. The purpose of tonight's (Feb.13) meeting was about the children -- about the sons and the daughters of all the parents that were here," he added. The BRC will make a recommendation to the Boundary Review Steering Committee (BRSC), which will provide a recommendation to the director of education. The director will bring a recommendation to the board of trustees who will then make a final decision. Blackwell said over the next couple of weeks the BRC and the BRSC will be talking about issues of school moves that the students have had already. "Parents will write in about siblings that might stay together or not be able to stay together in different scenarios. We're really going to put the student lens and the impact lens on," said Blackwell. "I can't predict where it ends because we simply look at options and make recommendations..." With respect to school moves, Amos said that grandfathering was an important criterion that needed to be addressed. "We can't start applying grandfathering to each scenario because we don't know which one we're going to end up at," said Amos. Melanie Schweizer, who has one child at Palermo and one at Emily Carr, would like to see more time spent on the review process, rather than "rushing into it" in the span of six weeks, she said. Blackwell said the BRSC started thinking about the scenarios before Christmas break and then "got right back to it in January." He also said the BRC has met four times and will meet again on Tuesday, Feb. 21. "We saw that we have an issue we needed to take a look at and we feel that our Boundary Review Committee has had a chance to give us their feelings and we're certainly going to look at what we saw tonight," said Blackwell. A final decision by the board of trustees is expected sometime in March. Those who did not attend Monday's meeting, but wish to provide feedback, can fill out a form on the HDSB website and e-mail it to plan@hdsb. ca. 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