If you are a JK to grade 7 Equinox parent/guardian who is considering relocating your child to another school anytime between February 2018 to September 2018, please inform the Equinox front office by February 16th, 2018.
Notifying Equinox’s front office that your child might be switching schools will in no way negatively impact your child’s enrolment at our school. Your child will continue to have a spot should they choose to stay. For example, you didn’t end up moving away or they did not receive a placement at another school, etc.
TDSB schools are required every February to submit to the board their current enrolment numbers and to mark down any potential student movement. This information is applied by TDSB to existing predetermined school class model breakdowns for how teachers are allocated and the number of students per each class. TDSB selects the best models possible within preset parameters.
As of the 2015- 2016 school year, TDSB began to freeze Alternative School enrolment after this allocation process was completed. They did so to reduce student movement between schools to better assess and allocate resources. Each Alternative School now has two type of enrolment spots: non-transferable and transferable. Desks that are marked in February for potentially a new student become transferable. All other desks become non-transferable — only the specific student assigned to that desk may occupy it. After the second week of school in September all transferable desks become non-transferable. No new students may be accepted at the Alternative School after mid-September.
For example, the Equinox Principal marks down 25 spots as transferable (i.e. 20 JK and five other grades) when she submits the enrolment numbers to TDSB. Then in March an existing Equinox student (i.e. number 26) decides to leave the school. Unfortunately, that means that spot must remain empty for the rest of the school year and the upcoming school year because it was not marked as transferable in February.
This is why student movement at Equinox plays such an important role in that process. As has happened in the past, if there is enough “unknown” student movement at Equinox, it could result in three of our classes collapsing down to two causing significantly larger classes sizes (i.e. 30+ students per class).
Please take the time to notify the front office if you are considering switching school. With more than 170+ students on the Equinox waitlist, we all hope to avoid having a seat left empty next year.
Thank you for your help.
Equinox School Council