The Grand Erie District School Board is a school board that has legal jurisdiction over Norfolk County, Haldimand County, and Brant County in the province of Ontario, Canada. The main headquarters are in Brantford.

History

The board was formed from the amalgamation of the Norfolk Board of Education, the Brant District Board of Education, and the Haldimand Board of Education in 1996.

In 1998, under Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris' government, the way public schools were funded dramatically changed. Among the changes, the province replaced local boards' power to levy taxes to fund schools with a centralized system of education grants. The new regime was accompanied by a law forcing school boards to adopt balanced budgets. These changes caused school closures in the Grand Erie Board, Burford District High School closed in 2002 after eighty years in the small town, and several schools fought to maintain their community based high schools successfully like Delhi District Secondary School.

Current projects

The school board has received permissions and funding to rebuild the Brantford Collegiate Institute, the oldest school in the city. According to the school website, the right wing of the school, built in 1910, will be completely demolished and rebuilt save for the facade and the administrative hallway. The 1963 wing will be refurbished, but not destroyed. The project is scheduled to take three school semesters and two summers, and some of the students will be relocated to the closed-down Victoria Elementary School.

Elementary schools in Norfolk County

• Boston Public School is a 200 student sixth grade feeder school to Townsend Central Public School and Waterford District High School.
• Courtland Public School is a feeder school to Valley Heights Secondary School and Delhi District Secondary School.
• Delhi Public School (to grade 6) and Windham Central Public School (grades 7 and 8) are the 350 student feeder schools for Delhi District Secondary School.
• Doverwood Public School is a 300 student feeder school to Port Dover Composite School.
• Elgin Avenue Public School is a 450 student feeder school to Simcoe Composite School and Waterford District High School.
• Houghton Public School is an eighth grade feeder school to Valley Heights Secondary School.
• Langton Public School is a 250 student eighth grade feeder school for Valley Heights Secondary School.
• Lynndale Heights Public School is a K-8 public elementary school located in Simcoe, Ontario.

Closed schools

Walsingham Public School was an elementary school that educated in grades K-8, formerly located in Walsingham Township, that was closed because of funding cutbacks and declining enrolment. The school was a feeder school to Valley Heights Secondary School. Due to the nearby presence of the Old Colony Mennonite School, which taught the local German Mennonite population, it had to attract students from both the northern and southern parts of Walsingham. Musician Geoff Suderman-Gladwell taught here.

North Public School is a defunct elementary school in Simcoe, Ontario, Canada that taught children from kindergarten to sixth grade. This school was once considered a feeder school to Elgin Avenue Public School. The school was established in the 1930s. At that time, North Public School included the seventh grade and the eighth grade but they were eliminated in governmental cutbacks caused by a decreasing birth rate starting in the 1970s.

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario, R. D. Gidney and W. P. J. Millar, McGill-Queen's University Press (May 1990), ISBN 0773507876
• Stacking the Deck: The Streaming of Working-Class Kids in Ontario Schools, Bruce Curtis, D. W. Livingstone, and Harry Smaller, Lorimer (January 1, 1992), ISBN 0921908113
• Special Education in Ontario Schools, Ken Weber, Highland Press (1999), ISBN 0969306172

External links

• Official site