Barrie's five High Schools (Innisdale, Eastview, Bear Creek, Barrie North, Barrie Central) are currently in an Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) process. This process will determine attendance boundaries, school sizes, and even which schools will close, remain open, be built or re-built. It will have far-reaching consequences, and is of critical importance to the future of secondary education in Barrie.
Unfortunately, this process has begun on weak footing. On September 8, at the Board's Building & Facilities meeting, a staff report was presented which recommended that the ARC membership be accepted and the first meeting be on Sept 21. It was accepted despite two major red flags.
First, the membership of the ARC was largely vacant. Of 15 voting members (2 parents and 1 student from each of the 5 schools), fewer than one third had been recruited. Even two weeks later, at the first "working meeting" of the ARC, several positions remained unfilled. It would have been very reasonable to have delayed this first ARC meeting to allow another week or two of recruitment, so that voting members won't have to take part having missed one or more of the early meetings.
Second, the first ARC "working meeting" was scheduled for September 21, the day before the Board meeting (Sept 22) which officially approved the ARC membership and meeting schedule. That means the first "working meeting" took place before the ARC was officially adopted by the Board. Again, a delay would have ensured that this potential procedural impropriety was not an issue. Sadly, the Board ended up breaking their own rules, and this may even become partial grounds to appeal the outcome of the ARC process to the Ministry of Education.
The ARC process is about more than listening, it has to involve active involvement to be successful. As your elected trustee, I will be an active participant in the ARC process.
