The Land Beneath the Schools
The Old Guardian May 26, 2026
Toronto’s public school lands have become a battleground.
Not in the way school communities usually fight — through elected trustees, public board meetings, and the slow machinery of democratic governance. Those mechanisms are no longer available to the communities that depend on them.
This battle is happening at the Ontario Land Tribunal. The next hearing is September 9.
What’s at Stake
In late 2025 the City of Toronto approved a pilot project — the Avenues policy — allowing developers to build mid-rise buildings of up to 14 storeys along major streets in two wards. School properties were initially exempted after community pushback. Residents understood that opening school lands to development signals to the market that those properties are available. And once public school land is sold it is almost impossible to get back.
That exemption is now under attack.
The Toronto District School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board — both governed by provincial supervisors appointed by Education Minister Paul Calandra — have filed an appeal with the Ontario Land Tribunal to remove the exemption and redesignate school properties for mid-rise development.
Calandra publicly supports the appeal.
“What the TDSB is doing is ensuring that the asset value — its asset value — is maintained to the highest level,” he told CityNews.
The supervisors who filed the appeal answer only to the Minister who supports it. The elected trustees who would have challenged this on behalf of communities cannot govern. Under the supervision orders in place at both the TDSB and TCDSB their governing authority is suspended — and Calandra has confirmed that trustees elected in October will not return to a governance function either. The suspension has no end date.
A publicly available analysis compiled by the protectschoollands.ca campaign documents more than 200 Toronto school properties across all 25 city wards potentially affected by the appeal — TDSB and TCDSB schools fronting on, adjacent to, or within assembling distance of newly designated Avenue corridors.
Among them: Bowmore Road Junior and Senior Public School in Ward 19 Beaches-East York. Ossington Old Orchard Junior Public School in Ward 9 Davenport. Schools in Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York, and every corner of the city.
If the appeal succeeds the exemption protecting those properties is removed. Redesignation doesn’t mean immediate sale. But it increases land value, creates pressure to dispose of properties when enrollment is low, and signals to developers that school land is in play.
The Toronto Lands Corporation — the TDSB’s real estate arm, now operating under the supervisor — has already developed redevelopment concepts for specific school sites. At Georges Vanier Secondary School in Don Valley North the TLC notes envision a development plan including hundreds of housing units. At the former Sir Robert L Borden site in Scarborough early concepts already include hundreds of housing units, a job skills training facility, and public realm improvements.
The machine is already moving.
The Community Response
Virginia Johnson noticed what was happening before most people did.
A Toronto parent and member of the Lakeview Avenue Neighbourhood Association, Johnson launched a petition opposing the OLT appeal. It has now gathered over 6,000 signatures — a number that has nearly tripled since the campaign began. She helped organize legal representation for the community at the tribunal. She co-organized a town hall on May 6 at 14 Division Community Room that drew a standing room crowd — Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles, MPP Jessica Bell, City Councillor Alejandra Bravo, and TDSB Trustee Alexis Dawson all attended.
“So many people just don’t know what’s happening,” Johnson told TOG. “Parents. Teachers. The gap between what’s being decided and what the community knows about it is enormous.”
The mood at the town hall was what Johnson describes as hungry and highly motivated — people asking what they can do, expressing deep concern about the lack of transparency around school lands, and voicing their distrust that the Ford government is making these decisions with community interests in mind.
Johnson is direct about the uncertainty at the heart of the legal fight.
Asked what winning looks like she paused.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said. “Will the board withdraw their appeal? I don’t know. We’re fighting something that keeps moving.”
What she does know is why it’s worth fighting.
“These green spaces — kids grow up on these schoolyards. They come back with their own children. They come back on their own. There’s a sense of ownership, a sense of belonging that develops on these lands over generations. In a dense urban city where we already have insufficient park space that matters enormously. And as the city gets denser it will matter more, not less.”
The Case Management Conference was held May 26. The next hearing date is September 9, 2026.
Community members can still request participant status with the Ontario Land Tribunal. The tribunal has confirmed it will continue to accept requests beyond the original deadline. Individual statements are preferred over templates. Participant status requires attending the hearings. Every registered participant signals to the tribunal the scale of community concern — and community numbers matter to the OLT.
To request participant status: protectschoollands.ca
Tribunal Case Nos.: OLT-26-000109 and OLT-26-000335
The Planning Gap
The appeal exposes a fundamental misalignment between how the City plans and how the school board plans.
The City of Toronto plans for growth 50 years out. The Avenues policy is designed to accommodate density along major streets for decades to come. New residents moving into mid-rise buildings on Ossington, Gerrard, Finch, and Lawrence will have children. Those children will need schools.
The TDSB plans enrollment approximately 10 years out. The board projects nearly 5,000 fewer students in 2026-27. That declining enrollment — produced in part by families leaving a city they can no longer afford, choosing alternatives to a public system under provincial supervision, or both — is being used to justify positioning school land for development.
The numbers tell a striking story. The Durham District School Board — one of the regions families are moving to — grew from 70,000 students in 2019 to 79,000 in 2023, a 12.8% increase in four years driven by new development and families relocating from Toronto. Durham is struggling to build new schools fast enough to accommodate that growth. In some communities it takes seven to ten years after new homes are built for a new school to open.
Toronto is losing the students Durham is gaining.
The families who left took their children with them. The land those children would have used is being sold based on their absence. When density returns to Toronto’s avenues — and the City’s 50-year planning horizon assumes it will — the schools won’t be there.
Johnson points to the absurdity already emerging at new development sites across Toronto — buildings going up along avenue corridors where marketing materials acknowledge there are no schools nearby to accommodate children.
The city is adding density. The schools that density will eventually need are being positioned for sale.
What a Trustee Sees
TOG notified TDSB Trustee Michelle Aarts, Ward 16 Beaches-East York, that Bowmore Road Junior and Senior Public School appears on the protectschoollands.ca property analysis. Her response drew on her direct knowledge as the elected trustee for that ward.
Most schools in Beaches-East York and Toronto-Danforth are currently over capacity with little to no options to move students to nearby schools. Most sit on constrained properties — too small to accommodate portables.
The Avenues policy is adding density to streets in communities where schools are already full and physically cannot expand. The land those schools sit on is being positioned for potential redesignation under the OLT appeal — in communities that will need more school space not less.
One school concerns Aarts most directly.
Eastdale Collegiate Institute on Gerrard Street East was built as a small school with a capacity of less than 400 students. It has operated as an intentionally small school serving at-risk students and students with special education needs. It has life skills training facilities, a rooftop garden, and a culinary program — resources designed specifically for students who struggle in larger institutional settings and who have few other options in the system.
The TDSB has cancelled Grade 9 enrollment at Eastdale for September 2026. No new students will enter the school this fall. Aarts fears the supervisor is positioning the school for closure and eventual sale — leaving the students it serves without the specialized environment built for them.
“The one school that is at risk is Eastdale Collegiate,” Aarts told TOG. “It is physically too small to be a regular secondary school and has operated as an ‘intentionally small’ school for at-risk students and special education students. It has great facilities for life skills training, a rooftop garden, and a culinary program. The TDSB has cancelled grade 9 enrolment for September and it is feared that the Supervisor is looking to close the school and sell it, leaving the students it serves at risk.”
It is also the site of Degrassi Junior High — a school with forty years of community identity in Toronto’s east end.
The Legislative Architecture
This appeal did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the logical endpoint of three pieces of legislation passed over three years.
Bill 98, the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 2023 — gave the Minister reporting rights over school board property and the power to direct decisions about acquisition, sale, lease, and disposition.
Bill 33, the Supporting Children and Students Act, November 2025 — gave the Minister power to supervise boards and remove elected trustees entirely.
The Putting Student Achievement First Act, April 2026 — gave the Minister power to oversee, redirect, or cancel capital projects and appoint third parties to control them.
Three bills. Three years. A complete legislative transfer of control over approximately $20 billion in public school land from democratic community governance to a single Minister.
That Minister publicly supports the appeal to remove the protection keeping school lands out of the development market.
The supervisors who filed the appeal answer only to him.
The Accountability Gap
Before supervision this appeal would have faced democratic challenge.
Elected trustees would have debated it in public board meetings. The community would have had elected representatives to call. The TLC projects — affordable housing, community hubs, long-term care facilities — that were underway when supervision was imposed in June 2025 reflected a community-benefit mandate developed with elected trustee oversight.
That mandate still reads: preserve public assets, collaborate to build complete communities where people live, learn, work and play.
The appeal filed by the supervisors moves in the opposite direction. And there is no elected democratic voice with governing authority challenging it on behalf of communities whose schools are on the list.
So the community organized itself.
A petition now carrying over 6,000 signatures. A legal team. A town hall with the Official Opposition. A participant registration campaign that the Ontario Land Tribunal is still accepting.
As the protectschoollands.ca campaign states plainly: given that Toronto school boards are now under the direct control of the province, instead of locally-elected school trustees, the local community’s interests are no longer represented.
Trustee Dan MacLean, who announced this month that he will not seek re-election in October, put the democratic failure precisely in a public statement: candidates are being asked to step forward for the October trustee election without knowing whether they will ever be allowed to do the job. Supervision has no end date. Trustees elected in October will not return to a governance function. The Minister confirmed it himself.
What You Can Do
The next Ontario Land Tribunal hearing is September 9, 2026.
Community members can still request participant status. The OLT has confirmed it will continue to accept requests. Individual statements carry more weight than templates. Participant status requires attending the hearings — your presence signals to the tribunal that this community is watching and engaged.
To request participant status and for updated guidance: protectschoollands.ca
Sign the petition. Write to Premier Ford and Minister Calandra directly. Tell your neighbours. Bring it to your school council. Contact your ward councillor.
Tribunal Case Nos.: OLT-26-000109 and OLT-26-000335
Our schools were paid for by the public. Once those lands are gone they do not come back.
Sources
ProtectSchoolLands.ca — School Properties Analysis, accessed May 2026
ProtectSchoolLands.ca — Participant Registration Campaign, accessed May 2026
Virginia Johnson — community organizer, protectschoollands.ca — in direct communication with TOG, May 2026
Trustee Michelle Aarts, Ward 16 Beaches-East York — in direct communication with TOG, May 2026
Trustee Dan MacLean, Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre — TorontoToday op-ed, May 2026
Beach Metro Community News — Cut in number of Toronto school trustees raises concerns, May 14, 2026
Durham District School Board — Enrollment Growth and Building New Schools — ddsb.ca
TorontoToday — TDSB enrollment and teacher cuts, April 7-14, 2026
CBC News — TDSB enrollment decline and teacher cuts, April 7-8, 2026
CityNews — Calandra asset value quote, 2026
Village Report — Calandra confirms trustees elected in October will not return to governance function, April 13, 2026
Ontario Land Tribunal — Case Nos. OLT-26-000109 and OLT-26-000335
Bill 98, Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 2023
Bill 33, Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025
Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026
TLC 2025-26 Annual Plan — torontolandscorp.com
TLC Project Updates, June 2025 — torontolandscorp.com
The Old Guardian — TDSB Governance Investigation, September 2025 — May 2026