A caretaker was manoeuvring his industrial-strength floor polisher between skids of new textbooks. Two teachers were sitting on the floor, daubing a coat of lavender paint onto a bookshelf. All the way down the hall, stacks of chairs and desks were piled as if some rogue moving van had disgorged its contents and then fled the scene.
"They're kicking me out of the office," Ms. Branco, the principal, said as she lugged around a carton full of her stuff, with a look of mock exasperation on her face.
"It'll all be back to normal next week," said Mr. Ghuman, a soft-spoken Firgrove teacher, as he ducked into the staff room.
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This is one of those cases where you should judge the book by its cover.
While most schools sit empty all summer, Ms. Branco and her staff have been burning the midnight oil, pushing themselves to prepare Firgrove for its new status as one of the Toronto District School Board's first three "model inner-city schools." (The others are Nelson Mandela, in Regent Park, and Willow Park, in Scarborough; four others will be announced in a second phase.)
This week, Firgrove will host the official launch of the $3.5-millionprogram. Unveiled last year, it is a response to critics who argued that the education system -- preoccupied as it is with class size and testing -- had ignored the complex needs of families that live in neighbourhoods characterized by an abundance of new immigrants and single parents, juggling issues such as poverty, inadequate child care and gang violence.
As a model inner-city school, Firgrove is about to receive additional staff and resources, team with up York University's teaching faculty, and find itself under the microscope for years to come. The quid pro quo is that Ms. Branco and her staff are expected to take what they have learned and spread the gospel to other educators, especially those in neighbouring schools faced with the same issues, but minus the financial windfall associated with model-school status.
The story of how Firgrove came to be selected reveals how a hard-scrabble neighbourhood and a handful of determined educators seized upon a rare chance to reimagine the kind of role the local school could play in the life of the community.
The TDSB began working on the project shortly after the 2003 election, pushed by parent activists and educators. "I've been deeply concerned about the virtual neglect of inner-city schools," says trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher, who spearheaded the campaign because she felt that the one-size-fits-all approach to education funding put poor children at a disadvantage.
Inner-city schools, according to a May, 2005, working group report, can't just focus on what takes place in the classroom. Rather, their teachers and administrators must be highly pro-active about establishing the school as a community hub for child-care, parenting and nutrition programs, as well as forging partnerships with local social-service agencies, parents' groups and recreation facilities. That report identified seven high-needs areas around the city, including a large swath of North York.
The board adopted the report's recommendations as a pilot project, and then, early last fall, put out a call to schools to apply.
Last fall, Ms. Branco was new to Firgrove, her second assignment as a principal. At 40, she is a chatty, energetic woman with the go-get-'em demeanour of a camp counsellor. She grew up in the west end and attended Central Commerce Collegiate Institute, then studied physical education and teaching at York University. She has lived for the past 22 years in the Jane-Lawrence area, and knows, from years of experience as both a parent and a teacher, that many of the things middle-class families take for granted don't come easily to households dealing with poverty and linguistic barriers. At Firgrove, the children speak 27 languages, and many come from low-income families.
Last October, Ms. Branco pitched the idea of putting Firgrove's name forward as a candidate. But she knew she had to gain the community's trust, her "biggest challenge."
To show they meant business, she and a handful of teachers, working with parents and various local agencies, raced to pull together a detailed 27-page plan, complete with a petition containing the names of most of the school parents. It itemized gaps and was chock-a-block with ideas for how to use the additional $1-million in resources -- everything from buying new math materials to hiring teachers with training in social work and slashing permit fees for local groups that want to use Firgrove after hours.
She made it clear to her staff that they had to be four-square behind the plan. "When we came up with the proposal, we had a big meeting and agreed it was either a hundred per cent commitment or nothing," Ms. Branco said. "They had to ask themselves, 'Are we on this train or are we not?' "
As it happened, Mr. Ghuman and two other Firgrove teachers had grown up nearby. They understood the area's challenges, but they also felt that the stigmatization of the Jane-Finch corridor obscures the fact that many of their childhood friends have gone on to successful careers. They sold their colleagues on the one-time opportunity that the model-school designation offered children. "This is not a needy community," Mr. Ghuman said. "It's a very rich community that needs a chance to showcase itself."
Firgrove's pitch was ready by early November. Last January, the TDSB selected the school, from among many strong applications, in large part because of the leadership and energy demonstrated by Ms. Branco and key teachers such as Mr. Ghuman, according to TDSB superintendent Verna Lister, Ms. Branco's boss.
As Ms. Cary-Meagher noted, "We were looking for people who bought into the vision and could deliver it well."
With that, Firgrove shifted into high gear to prepare for 2006-07. Ms. Branco reinstated a full phys-ed program, which had been cut over the years. The teachers began taking intensive professional development through York, and they will also be learning how to teach teachers at other schools to do the things that are successful at Firgrove.
The school forged a reading-buddy exchange with Crescent School, an elite academy on Bayview. Indeed, one of Ms. Branco's goals is for each member of her staff to establish a relationship with some local agency, always with an eye to assisting Firgrove parents to connect with various services.
She cites the example of the city's parks and recreation programs: The on-line registration is difficult for non-English speakers and those with no access to computers, so the school will be opening its computer lab in the evenings and providing help for parents who aren't familiar with the system.
The designation as a model inner-city school has brought Firgrove the kind of attention other schools crave. The board has moved to establish a daycare and parenting centre at the school, while York University has offered to put a student teacher in every classroom for the entire year. When it came time to hire new teachers late last spring, Ms. Branco had the pick of the crop -- 185 applications.
To further build momentum, Ms. Branco last spring decided to turn the Grade 6 graduation, a low-key, poorly attended afternoon affair, into a full-blown evening ceremony in the auditorium. Almost 500 people showed up to watch the school hand out dozens of new awards, for all sorts of achievements, both academic and otherwise.
One went to a boy in a special-ed program who, as Ms. Branco said, was "a real handful," but went on to win the TDSB's top track award. "We used the sports to bring out the goodness in him," she said, adding that the school hooked him up with York's phys-ed faculty as he moved on to middle school. "Those kinds of things would have never been acknowledged before." As she recalls, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
Heading into September, Ms. Branco, not surprisingly, has high hopes for Firgrove. At present, 45 per cent of the children score at the provincial average on standardized tests; within three years, she wants that number to jump by 15 per cent. As they sat in the staff room this week, Ms. Lister urged Ms. Branco to be cautious about such predictions. But it was apparent that even after a summer with little rest, Ms. Branco is pumped. "We could be as good as Allenby or John Wanless. But we're not. What's stopping us?"
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