Support specialized programs & schools made possible by optional attendance!

We also need a new principle, so if someone can make a petition for that too it would be greatly appreciated.

I am totalling against phasing out specialized programs like those at Claude Watson. It's really quite disgusting to punish students.... everyone knows what it's all about: MONEY

This is awful!! Please stop this!

specialized programs are so important to so many people. Can't imagine not being part of one and having the chance to do what I love at school everyday.

To boost equity, you must increase the number of specialized programs in the school board, not phasing them out entirely so that nobody has access to them.

This would be a travesty!!

I am who I am today because of the Claude Watson program, the teachers that influenced me and the experiences and opportunities I was given through the arts at Earl Haig SS.

This is crazy! Can not happen to our children!!!!!!

Specialized programs should be kept, as all the students in them have worked incredibly hard to get accepted. They applied to get in for a reason and it shouldn't be taken away from them just like that.

As a former student of Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, I am appalled to hear of the TDSB's mere consideration of phasing out specialized schools. Students deserve a proper education and specialized schools can give them that. During my high school career, I attended four different high schools in Toronto, Mississauga, and London, Ontario, none of which offered me the same support and ambition as Rosedale. Rosedale is unique in that, unlike other arts-specialized schools in the GTA, it is open to all students regardless of background, including any audition process. As a child, I was incredibly anxious and scared to pursue the arts. While I was encouraged, Rosedale felt like my only option. I was too afraid to audition for other programs, including those at Etobicoke School of the Arts and Earl Haig Secondary School's Claude Watson program. While both of those schools are commendable themselves, Rosedale gave me the opportunity to pursue the arts free of any judgement I was concerned about as a child. And isn't that what we want for our children? For them to go forward and chase their dreams? I would not have come out of high school as the same woman if it were not for being allowed to attend a specialized education. Not all children succeed in mainstream education, as I discovered during my time at other "non-specialized" schools. In those schools, I was bored and apathetic because my education was broad and unfocused. In elementary and middle school, children are being given the fundamentals for their education. By high school, we are taking the first steps towards our futures, whether that be continuing to post-secondary or starting a career. High school is agreed upon as some of our most formative years, when students are forming identities and passions. Some students may be well-suited towards schools that offer a broad range of subjects and specialties and it is not for me to say what will best suit someone else's child. But for me, access to the ar

Please keep most of programs which have been running years. The young people who need special education to get the goal.

As someone currently enrolled at an arts school this would be like the worstttt

I went to an arts high school in Toronto and continued my musical education after graduating. I now have an undergraduate degree in music education and I am currently working towards my Master's degree in music performance. Music is the thing that literally saved me in high school and gave my life purpose. Honestly, without the program like the one I was lucky enough to be in during high school, I don't know if I would have ever gone to university or even be here today. The arts are just as important as other programs and everyone can benefit from them.

I simply cannot believe the TDSB is proposing this. I am an alumni of the Claude Watson program at Earl Haig and I know that students and parents all over the country have the desire to go to this school because of this program. The graduates of the program make the cuts to top post-secondary schools in North America and it would be a disaster if such programs in the TDSB gets eliminated!

Art and creative outlets for students are important to development!

This is not fair at all for those gifted students who would be feeling boring and unchallenging.

I am a graduate of ESA. I would not be the artist I am today, without schools like ESA

We need specialized programs in are school

Arts matter

I think this is very good decision