Bill 23, which was passed in 2022 by the Ford Government, means that buildings across the province that are not formally heritage designated will lose their heritage protection as of January 1, 2027.

Among the impacted properties in West Windsor are a number of remaining schools owned by the Greater Essex County District School Board, including Marlborough School and the Alice Mason Education Centre on University Avenue. These schools, in addition to Prince Edward Public School, Queen Victoria Public School, Honourable W.C. Kennedy Collegiate Institute, David Maxwell Public School and William G. Davis Public School, have been identified by City planners as heritage schools that deserve protection.

On Monday, Council began the process of designating five of these schools, while continuing discussions about Marlborough, Alice Mason and William G. Davis. The School Board is opposing heritage designation for three of the properties: Marlborough, Alice Mason and William G. Davis. You can read the Board’s letter in the consolidated agenda starting on PDF page 76.

I agree that these buildings may have challenges. They are old, require repairs, face accessibility issues, and in some cases the cost of renovating them compared with building new may favour replacement.

At the same time, I believe the School Board is exercising some selective memory in how it is framing these heritage issues and the City’s position.

Marlborough

Focusing first on Marlborough, I have questions about the demographic argument being put forward by the School Board.

The most recent Long-Term Accommodation Report was completed for the 2023–24 school year. That report projected Marlborough at roughly 80% utilization through much of the 2030s. Then, in 2025, the School Board removed French Immersion from Marlborough. In the same accommodation report, French Immersion was identified as helping to fill otherwise underutilized space at the school. Now, after removing that program, the Board points to Marlborough operating at roughly 50% capacity as evidence that the school is underutilized and should eventually be replaced. At the same time, Bellewood on Totten is, from my understanding, approaching capacity, which could mean portables in its future. We are moving West Windsor students out of the ward for specialized programming while simultaneously arguing that Marlborough has too much space.

That raises another question: when this change was set in motion last year, did our existing trustees, Sarah Cipkar and Kim McKinley, understand that removing French Immersion could strengthen the argument for replacing Marlborough entirely?

There is also a broader demographic question. New Census data will be released next year, and West Windsor has experienced significant neighbourhood change in recent years. How can we be so confident today that this community will need a smaller school over the long term?

West Gate is already over capacity and using portables. Yet the proposal for Marlborough appears to contemplate a smaller replacement school. If that is the long-term direction, we need to understand what it means for West Windsor families. Does it mean more children will eventually be assigned to schools outside the neighbourhood because there will no longer be enough capacity within West Windsor?

There is also a heritage consideration that goes beyond the building itself. Marlborough is one of only three currently listed heritage structures south of College Avenue, alongside Maryvale and the entrance to Mic Mac Park. Losing it would therefore have a disproportionate impact on the remaining built heritage of this part of the city.

What about General Brock?

The accommodation report projected General Brock facing a capacity gap similar to Marlborough’s by the early 2030s. Removing French Immersion from Marlborough has widened the utilization gap between the two schools. That raises a question that deserves a clear answer: is there a longer-term possibility of consolidating these schools into a new, larger school serving a broader portion of West Windsor?

If that is even a potential future scenario, the community should understand it before decisions are made that could make the demolition of Marlborough irreversible.

Where would a replacement school actually go?

There are also practical questions about how a new school would fit on the Marlborough property. Much of the apparent “surplus” land is currently the school’s playing field facing Tecumseh Road. Would a new building be located there? What would that mean for mature trees on the property? Where would buses, parents and students enter and exit?

Tecumseh Road is already busy, while Felix Avenue experiences its own congestion during school arrival and dismissal periods.The City also has plans to reconstruct this area in 2029–30 under the current capital budget. If future improvements include traffic calming between Felix and Prince, or potentially a roundabout, the design and orientation of a replacement school could have major implications for both the neighbourhood and the City’s infrastructure plans.

Those questions need to be considered before assuming demolition and replacement is the simplest answer.

Heritage schools can be successfully renewed

Another issue I have with the Board’s argument is that several of the schools where it is not opposing heritage designation have already received significant public investment. Approximately $5 million was invested in restoring Kennedy Collegiate. Significant work has also been undertaken at Prince Edward Public School. Then there is the already-designated James L. Dunn Public School, where roughly $15 million was invested to transform a designated heritage property into a functioning modern school.

Those projects demonstrate that heritage designation does not automatically prevent modernization or continued educational use. So I think West Windsor residents are entitled to ask: if preserving and investing in heritage schools makes sense elsewhere in Windsor, why is preservation being presented as such a significant barrier here?

We also have history with surplus school properties

The Board’s suggestion that the City is somehow treating it unfairly because the former Benson School has not yet been designated also deserves some context. The School Board sold Benson to a private developer, and the property has now contributed to nearly a decade of blight in our neighbourhood.And then there is Forster.

West Windsor has already experienced what can happen when significant institutional and heritage properties are declared surplus without a clear long-term plan for their future. That history is one of the reasons why I am understandably concerned about what happens next with Marlborough.

Collaboration has to work both ways

The Board says it wants a collaborative relationship with the City, and I agree that collaboration is important. But collaboration has to work both ways. The Board sold Windsor Stadium to a private developer rather than reaching an agreement with the City. It has also been unwilling to collaborate on School Bus Extras unless the City assumes the cost. To be fair, some of these broader collaboration challenges apply to both local school boards.

Still, if we are going to talk about partnership between the City and our school boards, then it should be a genuine partnership that considers neighbourhood planning, transportation, recreation, heritage and community needs alongside the operational needs of the education system.

And what explains the difference between the public and Catholic systems?

Finally, the Board’s demographic argument does not appear to address what is happening elsewhere in West Windsor’s school system. Catholic schools in the neighbourhood are growing. Assumption added four or more portables this summer, while St. James is also accommodating students in portables.

That raises an important question: if demand for Catholic education is growing in West Windsor, why is the public board projecting declining demand significant enough to justify building a smaller school? There may be legitimate explanations — enrolment patterns, program choices, catchment boundaries or differences between the two systems — but those differences should be clearly explained before a decision is made that could permanently reduce public-school capacity in West Windsor.

I am not arguing that every old building must be preserved forever, regardless of cost or condition. Schools need to be safe, accessible and appropriate for modern education. But before we demolish a significant neighbourhood institution like Marlborough, I think we need a much more complete conversation about enrolment assumptions, program decisions, future capacity, heritage, neighbourhood planning and what the long-term vision for public education in West Windsor actually is.

Trustees Opinion

Given that Trustees matter in decisions around I figured I would ask their opinions on this. So I sent all Ward 1, 2, 10 Trustee Candidates the following email:

The scope of my questions were slightly narrower than this broader post, but still informative. I am sharing screenshots so they are shown in their completed form. Due to the length of some replies some are split over two or more screenshots and you may download the PDFs of the emails next to the candidates name.

Malini Ondrovcik – Email download

Todd Gervais – Email Download 1

A short follow up email was also provided: Email Download 2

Tina Chittle – Email Download

Fazle Baki – Email Download

Affan Shahid – email download

No response was received from Sandra Kirma

I will not comment on the specifics of the responses, I share them so voters can follow up if any of these candidates come to the door or attend a community event between now and election day. Where this goes from here, we will have to see. In the short term, the ball is in the School Board’s court. My position, however, is clear.

The School Board needs to be transparent about its long-term plans for schools in West Windsor. That means answering some basic questions:

• When will the next Accommodation Review be completed?
• If the provincial moratorium on school closures is lifted, are any West Windsor schools at risk of closure or consolidation?
• Will there be a future boundary review that could result in students crossing major arterial roads such as Huron Church Road or Tecumseh Road to attend school?
• Will the Board consider anchoring West Windsor schools with specialized programming that attracts students from across the city and region, whether at the elementary, secondary or adult education level?
• Has any meaningful consultation been undertaken with students, staff, parents or the broader community about the future of West Windsor schools?
• Why do Catholic schools in West Windsor appear to be growing while public schools continue to struggle with enrolment?

If cost is one of the primary concerns, then we should also be exploring alternatives to simply demolishing and replacing existing schools. There appears to be enough land at some sites to allow renovation or reconstruction to be phased over multiple budget years while continuing to operate the existing school. I also understand that the School Board owns other surplus lands in the area that could potentially be sold or leveraged to help fund future investments. The Board should also be transparent about what partnerships it has explored with the City, other levels of government, community organizations or other institutions to reduce costs, improve facilities or strengthen enrolment and programming in West Windsor.

I believe that where heritage properties can reasonably and viably be preserved, they should be. We have seen too many former schools allowed to rot beyond points of no return.

More broadly, schools are critical neighbourhood infrastructure. A neighbourhood without appropriately sized schools that can accommodate future growth will struggle to revitalize. Planning for undersized schools in West Windsor risks constraining future residential growth, attracting fewer families and undermining broader neighbourhood revitalization efforts.

And finally, students and staff in West Windsor deserve the best schools to work and learn in but that does not require the building of a cookie cutter shoebox on a soccer field for the lowest possible cost at the expense of neighbourhood character and heritage. I want to be very clear about Marlborough School and the Alice Mason Education Centre. If there is any indication that either property is being considered for demolition or redevelopment, without many of the above issues being clarified. If I am still serving on Council, I will immediately move to have those properties formally designated under the Ontario Heritage Act, regardless of whether the School Board supports that designation.

This is a major plank of my neighbourhood revitalization strategy in my platform, more on this soon!