Toronto District School Board
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Provide Equity of Access to Learning Opportunities for All Students

  • We will effectively integrate the voices, choices, abilities and experiences of our students into our school programming. Students will be more successful when they are engaged in their learning in this manner. We will be more responsive to the strengths, interests, gifts, and lived realities of our students as we create and design our schools and classrooms.
  • We will ensure that every school offers a wide range of programming and creates a welcoming, inclusive learning environment for all students.
  • We will continually review and assess our policies, procedures and practices to ensure that they promote equity, inclusion and human rights practices.
  • We will review program, planning and accommodation needs to ensure equitable access, increased opportunities and enhanced learning outcomes for all students.

  • Action Plans

    • Long-Term Program and Accommodation Strategy
      As the City of Toronto grows and changes, demographics shift, and the pressures on school infrastructure change. The Board uses a Long-Term Program and Accommodation Strategy (LTPAS) as a tool to help anticipate these shifts, and ensure that there is space for students where it is needed.

      As we update the strategy, the Board will take steps to ensure underserved students are considered in the plan, and maintain our commitment to human rights, equity, accessibility and inclusion.

    • Policy and Procedures Related to Access
      The TDSB offers a number of specialized programs, including French language programs and alternative schools. The Board will undertake a review of the admissions procedures and auditions associated with these programs, and what barriers might be preventing underserved students from accessing them.

    • Secondary Program
      In order to meet the different interests and learning styles of our students, the TDSB must keep updating course offerings and delivery methods. The Board will conduct a review of existing programming offering in secondary schools and scan for gaps based on feedback obtained through student surveys, and explore the expansion of new delivery models, such as virtual high schools, experiential learning and co-op programming.

    • Accessibility
      The Board is working to remove physical and attitudinal barriers that prevent students and staff with disabilities from accessing services. These efforts will include developing a new set of accessibility principles and standards that are aligned with the Board’s equity policy and with Ontario Human Rights Commission disability rights objectives. They will also include new resources for staff and evaluations of the effectiveness of existing training strategies.

    • Human Rights
      Human rights principles will be infused into the work of the Board, in every school, in every workplace, in order to eliminate embedded systemic barriers that hurt disadvantaged students the most. The Board will also commit to investigate and resolve cases brought to the Human Rights Office in a timely and effective manner.

    • Employment Equity: Equitable Recruitment, Hiring, Promotion and Placement Processes Aligned with Principles of Human Rights
      In order to achieve our goals in equity and anti-oppression, our workforce needs to reflect and understand our diverse population at all levels. To that end, the Board will be reviewing its hiring and promotion practices, and enhancing recruitment of Indigenous and other racialized staff.

      The board will also review and refresh its demographic questionnaires from application, to point of hire and promotion, in order to collect data, and inform policies. And staff responsible for hiring will engage in professional learning designed to remove barriers for racialized and underrepresented groups.