Africentric Schools - are they the right way to help our Africentric students?

In 2012 - the TDSB will embark on adding an Africentric High School to compliment our elementary Africentric school.

There has been some concern raised about why we are doing this? It's simple. Students who are identified as africentric don't graduate from high school - and no matter what the provincial government does this group isn't showing any significant improvement.

So Dr Spence thinks that these specialty schools will help them. Will it? It will take time to know for sure but I hope so - their graduation rates of about 60% is not good enough - without a high school diploma job choices are very limited and long term poverty is inevitable - thus the cycle continues.

I do look forward to success and then I hope that the successes of the specialty schools can be extrapolated and shared with any school in our system and beyond. TDSB is not the only school district struggling with these issues.

As we move forward with all the specialty schools - my hope is that we are meeting the needs of students who would otherwise be at risk and we are saving them one student at a time - if necessary.