Crazy suburban development and the growth in new schools

Yesterday, my son and I had a wonderful experience.  We visited his former grade 6 teacher, M. Brisebois. I wrote about M. Brisebois in an earlier post.  High school teachers tend to run into their former students.  I know they're thrilled when a young person approaches them and says, "Hello Ms. Jones.  Do you remember me?  I'm Aaron and I was in your class four years ago."

My teacher friends love this!  They regale me with the details of what their former students are doing now and what nice young adults they've become. They remember their students clearly and with great fondness, even the ones who acted out in class! Don't ever be afraid to say hello to your former teacher.

It's often different for elementary teachers as young students are not as easily recognizable later on.  And it's more likely too that a child's family or the teacher has moved on in the intervening years. For an elementary teacher, it's a rare experience to speak to a former student and likely a real treat.

So it was with M. Brisebois yesterday.  He met us at the school office grinning from ear to ear.   He hadn't changed over the years but clearly my son has.  M. Brisebois mentioned that he wasn't sure he'd recognize Gabriel on the street, which is understandable given that not many elementary students sport facial hair.

We were given a little tour of the school.  Clearly M. Brisebois hadn't changed in other ways too as the entrance of his classroom was decked out like the portal of a spaceship. Gabe is now a little too tall for the grade-4 spaceship but as you can see, the spaceship comes fully equipped with a time machine and a space-reading helmet (decorated plastic colander) for each child.  One child could even be seen jumping through a space warp <wink>.  Nothing's too good for our kids!

But I digress.  On my way to the school in one of Ottawa's growing suburbs, I passed a French elementary school and then pulled into the parking lot of the school next door, thinking it was our school.  Turns out, it was a Catholic elementary school and our school was the third in line.  Imagine this if you can. Three large elementary schools all lined up in a row, each one likely capable of holding 500 students.  Our school now accommodates over 600 students and there are 12 portable classrooms already, the maximum allowable for the site.  I don't know where we'll put the extra students next year as the kindergarten class will likely double in size with the introduction of full-day kindergarten.

I suspect the two other schools are more than filled too.  But why are there three schools rather than one or two?  Why three schools in-a-row on a main street rather than scattered within walking distance inside the subdivision?  And why the extraordinary growth in outer-ring subdivisions when there are single-family homes in older suburbs with schools and classroom space available nearby?

I read an article this past weekend stating that Canada has become a suburban nation. The majority of us live in suburbs.  But here's the thing, families aren't settling in the perfectly good older suburbs that come fully equipped with uncrowded schools, libraries, and community centres with pools and skating rinks.  Oh no, instead young families are buying brand-new homes in the far-out suburbs, which creates added expense in terms of new school and facility construction, new infrastructure construction, additional commute time, additional car use, more pollution, and a reduction in arable farmland.

Meanwhile in my middle city area, there are some lovely neighbourhoods and family homes without families. This creates a doughnut effect as condos are built downtown to house empty-nesters and new homes are built on the outskirts.  People aren't crazy so why is this happening?

From what I can see, the cost of new home construction is indirectly subsidized by government and tax revenue. Overall this artificially keeps the price of new homes down while it keeps the demand up.  When new home buyers pay school development charges, they pay to purchase the land only.  All other costs, the school construction and outfitting, are paid for by the school board and the provincial government.

Now these families could choose to buy a house in an older suburb, where schools and other amenities are already in place.  But they choose instead to purchase a house farther out because developers don't have to pass along the real costs of providing schools and infrastructure for the new subdivision and are thereby able to keep the cost of the new houses artificially low.  While there's money to be made in renovating and rebuilding older homes, I suspect the profit margins are better in the subdivisions where developers can go in and build many houses at a time.

Although this all sounds rather complicated, it could be fixed.  If Education Development Charges that are levied for new house construction truly reflected the actual costs of building schools rather than simply the land price, these new homes would become more costly to build.  The purchase price of new subdivision houses would increase accordingly and older suburban homes in established neighbourhoods would become more competitively priced.  Suburban sprawl would be thereby constrained, new school demand slowed, and the number of school portables would be reduced.  I suspect this is true for municipal development charges but what do I know?  I'm just a school trustee. What I do know is that it will never happen as long as developers continue to hold disproportionate political sway in our communities and in our province.


The views expressed in this blog are personal opinions only.