Buzzapp Master 
Article content
Trustee Lynn Scott said she was concerned about grandparenting wherever possible because it could affect the viability of receiving schools.
Article content
“Right now, we have many English-only schools that are slated to become dual-track schools,” Scott said. “If we allowed widespread grandparenting from the sending schools so they all stay at the sending schools, I’m concerned that those English-only schools will not have a healthy cohort of French immersion students.”
Article content
Ostafichuk believes there will be room to grandparent students who would be required to move several times in the space of a few years: for example, a Grade 5 student who would have to move to another school for Grade 6, then to a third school for Grade 7.
Article content
There’s a reluctance to offer blanket exemptions because sometimes it’s not known what people want, Ostafichuk said.
Article content
“We are looking at developing a process through the transition that will allow us to identify from families what it is that they’re seeking,” she said.
Article content
Article content
There are other questions, including how long grandparenting will last. Trustee Lyra Evans said she was concerned about committing to grandparenting for siblings.
Article content
“Because that may well be 15 years of grandparenting for kids who don’t even exist yet,” she said.
Article content
The question of what constitutes a sibling has been a challenge in the past, Ostafichuk said.
Article content
“Do they have to be walking or crawling the Earth at this point in time or just contemplated? Of late we have looked at those children who are of school-aged years and potentially a couple of years younger as a sort of reasonable cutoff,” she said.
Article content
“We’re going to have to come up with some criteria not dissimilar to the transfer process. There may be some judgment that has to be exercised about the acuity of personal circumstances, whether that’s a sibling issue or a ‘three schools in three years’ issue.”
Article content
Article content
Some trustees say they’re still dissatisfied with revisions to the plan.
Article content
The promise that the elementary review would create more equity among schools was a “bait and switch,” trustee Nili Kaplan-Myrth said. The board’s own data shows that schools that have been identified as disadvantaged because they don’t have French immersion are those where students are disproportionately racialized, disabled or are newcomers to Canada, she argues.
Article content
In the Alta Vista area, there are currently eight schools, five of them English-only. Under the revised plan, Hawthorne Public School and Arch Street Public School would still not have French immersion, Kaplan-Myrth said.
Article content
OCDSB director of education Pino Buffone said he agreed with Kaplan-Myrth’s argument in principle. However, Alta Vista has more pupil spaces than pupils. It was hard to take the population of the three existing French immersion schools in the area and create viable French immersion programs in all schools.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings