When the Tower Comes First
The Old Guardian
June 13, 2026
On June 2, 2026, a TDSB superintendent sent a letter to parents.
TOG reported on that letter the same week it was sent — before CBC, CTV, CP24, the Toronto Star, and the Toronto Sun all picked up the story this week. Not because TOG has resources those outlets don’t. Because TOG had already been reading the protectschoollands.ca property analysis, and that analysis had already flagged exactly this site as one TLC was watching.
This week the story became impossible to ignore. It’s worth slowing down and explaining what’s actually happening — and why TOG saw it coming.
The Letter
The letter, from Superintendent Jennifer Chan, explained that a 60-storey tower is being built at 149 College Street, directly next to Orde Street Public School’s outdoor play area. Construction will bring excessive vibration, traffic, noise, air quality concerns, and the risk of falling objects — conditions the board says are “not conducive to a safe learning environment.”
The board’s solution: move Orde Street’s roughly 400 students into the building currently occupied by Heydon Park Secondary School, about 700 metres away.
Heydon Park, in turn, will need to be relocated. The earliest that could happen is January 2027. Where, the letter doesn’t say.
What TOG Flagged First
Before this letter became a five-outlet story, TOG had already connected it to something most readers wouldn’t think to look for: the protectschoollands.ca property analysis — the same document underlying TOG’s reporting on the Ontario Land Tribunal appeal over school lands.
That document, compiled before the June 2 letter, already noted Orde Street’s situation in its internal commentary: TLC has been closely monitoring emerging redevelopment plans for adjacent properties with potential impacts resulting from proposed size and proximity to the Orde site. Over the coming year, TLC will continue to observe this potential redevelopment activity and explore opportunities that may arise for TDSB and the school community.
That sentence was written about a 60-storey tower next to a school. It described displacement as an “opportunity” before the displacement was announced.
This week, the opportunity arrived.
Who Heydon Park Serves
Heydon Park Secondary School, near Dundas Street West and Beverley Street, has existed for more than a century. It is a specialized public high school for young women, transgender, and non-binary students — many of whom have special education needs and arrived at Heydon Park because larger, more institutional environments didn’t work for them.
Jessica Rotolo, a Heydon Park graduate who now volunteers at the school, put it bluntly. “TDSB, you are making the biggest mistake of your life. This school helps people like me who have a disability come out of their shell.”
Parents described the news as a fresh blow after a difficult year. Like Eastdale Collegiate — the school documented in TOG’s reporting on the OLT appeal — Heydon Park had its Grade 9 enrollment cancelled within the past year, and families have spent that time rallying to protect the school. Now, with this relocation announcement, parents fear the move is a step toward Heydon Park being phased out entirely, with its students dispersed into larger mainstream high schools — the exact environments many of them came to Heydon Park to escape.
One parent described what that would mean for her daughter: in a larger school of over a thousand students, she had gone missing before. At Heydon Park, that risk is managed by an environment built for students who need it.
This is the same pattern TOG documented at Eastdale. Schools that serve students who need stability, small environments, and trusted relationships are treated as the most movable pieces on the board — because their small size makes them easiest to relocate, and because the students they serve are the least likely to have the means to organize loudly against it.
They are organizing anyway. Parents and advocates rallied outside Heydon Park this week, and have been speaking to CBC, CTV, CP24, the Star, and the Sun.
“We Will Work With the Principal”
The TDSB’s public response is that moving Orde Street’s 400 students to Heydon Park “makes the most sense” because there is room for all of them to stay together — and that Heydon Park’s students will also stay together at their new site, since the school draws from across the city rather than a fixed geographic boundary.
That explains the logistics. It does not explain where Heydon Park is going, or why families are learning about a decision affecting a century-old specialized school through a letter rather than a consultation process.
Under the previous governance structure, a decision displacing a specialized school serving vulnerable students would have gone through trustees — debated in public, with families able to ask questions of people accountable to them at the ballot box. That structure doesn’t exist right now. The supervisors who approved this plan answer to the Minister, not to Heydon Park families.
The board has scheduled parent-teacher meetings to answer questions and gather feedback. The June 17 virtual information meeting referenced in the superintendent’s letter is the broader forum. Both are information sessions. Neither is a decision-making body, and neither existed before the decision was made.
The Through-Line
TOG’s reporting on the Ontario Land Tribunal appeal — “The Land Beneath the Schools” — documented over 200 Toronto school properties potentially affected by redesignation for mid-rise development, including sites where TLC had already begun developing redevelopment concepts.
Heydon Park is what that looks like in practice, months before the OLT even rules.
No redesignation was required. No appeal needed to succeed. A private development next door was enough to trigger the displacement of a specialized school serving some of the system’s most vulnerable students — students who, in many cases, came to Heydon Park after larger schools failed them, and whose families are now watching the cycle threaten to repeat itself.
If this is what happens at one site under current conditions, it is worth asking what happens at the more than 200 sites named in the OLT appeal if it succeeds.
What Families Can Do
The June 17 virtual information meeting is the immediate opportunity for Heydon Park and Orde Street families — and anyone concerned about how this decision was made — to ask direct questions on the record.
For families connected to the broader school lands fight, the OLT participant registration process remains open through protectschoollands.ca, with the next hearing date September 9.
These are not two separate stories. They are the same story, at two different stages.
Sources
TDSB letter to parents, Jennifer Chan, Superintendent of Education, June 2, 2026
CTV News Toronto — ‘Biggest mistake’: Toronto parents, advocates slam decision to relocate school for young women with special needs, Beth Macdonell, June 4, 2026
CBC News — Parents speak out as TDSB high school for special needs students forced to relocate, June 2026
Toronto Star — Parents at TDSB special-needs school Heydon Park shocked by moving plan, June 2026
Toronto Sun — Parents oppose TDSB plan to relocate Toronto special-needs school for females, June 5, 2026
TorontoToday — TDSB to relocate students of special needs high school, raising fear it will be forced to close, June 2026
ProtectSchoolLands.ca — School Properties Analysis, accessed May 2026
The Old Guardian — The Land Beneath the Schools, May 2026