The Toronto District School Board has a fine collection worth $7 million, so use it don’t hide it

By MOIRA MACDONALD

20th May 2009

The only shame in the debate over the Toronto District School Board’s art collection is that it is still languishing in a secret vault.

Let’s get that art out, let’s get it up and let the TDSB start making money off of it.

I broke the story in the fall of 2007 that the board had been quietly fanning staff out to retrieve some 7,000 art works from its schools.

The works were put into a vault for safe-keeping and restoration until the board could figure out the best way to use them. Using the works for the benefit of students’ education — a good artwork holds lessons that go on for a lifetime — and securing their longevity were priorities.

So tonight, when a motion by trustee and artist Gary Crawford to hire a curator for the collection goes to the board’s finance committee, let’s get off this Philistine argument of selling the art to the highest bidder to pay for things like pools and support staff.

A liquidation sale would be like hawking your great-grandmother’s wedding ring just to keep the lights on a few more months — when what you really should do is get your household budget and spending in better order.

We are talking about a collection of paintings and sculptures amassed over the decades through private gifts and small purchases by the TDSB’s six former “legacy” boards. Once the collection was gathered in 2007 it was appraised at $7 million — the bulk concentrated in about 20 “top-tier” art works, including Tom Thomson’s Autumn Scene, which Riverdale Collegiate would understandably love to have back.

The value — both financial and cultural — of these works is a key reason Crawford and others were getting nervous about continuing to allow them to hang all over town without any concerted plan for protecting them.

A pair of Japanese prints worth at least $20,000 were on the verge of being thrown out before they were picked up in the TDSB’s great art haul. A Fred Varley — one of the Group of Seven — was found leaning against a principal’s desk on the floor.

All systems are go to establish a reference group of people from Toronto’s art world, business and the board to come up with a go-forward plan including ideas on protecting the collection and marketing it, while giving students access to it and tying the art to their curriculum.

Crawford hopes a board committee tonight will agree the board should earmark $65,000 to hire a curator for a year. That person could provide credibility to the art community that the board is serious about managing the collection professionally, while also taking care of the administrative necessities to getting the collection out of the vault and available for teaching purposes.

A curator “would allow us to get the works out of the vault much quicker,” than trying to do things in-house, Crawford told me yesterday. He also believes the position could pay for itself. The curator could help the board apply for government art grant funding and better position it to leverage the collection to pay for its upkeep through print productions and partnerships with other cultural agencies.

LOST FOREVER

History shows our legacy to future generations is often in the stuff that enriches life rather than what’s necessary for merely plodding along its path. Yes, we need decent buildings for students to learn in — and too many don’t have them. But that’s not because the school board is clinging to an art collection that would pay to keep pools open only for another year or two — while the art would be lost forever, probably to private collectors, now hovering in the wings to scoop them up.

When we say get creative about money, that doesn’t mean hawking a cultural legacy for short-term solutions. Let’s find a solution that lasts even a fraction as long as the Mona Lisa’s smile.

MOIRA.MACDONALD@SUNMEDIA.CA

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/moira_macdonald/2009/05/20/9508811-sun.html

May 18, 2009

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/635686

Toronto’s public school board has been so preoccupied lately by the future of its unfunded swimming pools that another of its legacies – a remarkable but unheralded collection of Canadian art – has languished almost forgotten.

Last week, the Star’s Kristin Rushowy gave readers an exclusive glimpse of the treasures locked away in the board’s art vault, including the jewel in the crown: a Tom Thomson painting that hung for years in the principal’s office at Riverdale Collegiate but now goes unseen.

Purchased by an art teacher for $50 shortly after Thomson’s death, Autumn Scene is today worth $1.5 million.

Of course, not all of the 7,000 pieces in the collection command sky-high prices. But about 155 of the most valuable paintings are worth an estimated $7 million.

That raises the question of how to handle this apparent embarrassment of riches: Sell to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to spruce up pools? Keep the showpieces out of sight? Sell prints for fundraising? It’s an enviable dilemma for school trustees more accustomed to dealing with perennial budget shortfalls than fire sales.

There are no easy answers. Toronto’s public schools are hardly suited to displaying the most valuable artworks, which require proper curatorial handling. Curating and restoring the art works could be a continued drain on the system.

But it would be a shame to keep many of the less valuable pieces out of sight from students and teachers, who might soon get reacquainted with a piece of our history.

 Autumn Scene by Tom Thomson is valued at $1.5 million.   Jobs are being cut and pools are on the chopping block, but Toronto’s public school board says it would be a ‘mistake’ to sell its secret vault full of valuable paintings
May 15, 2009 04:30 AM

Kristin Rushowy
Education Reporter

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/634694

The Tom Thomson painting is worth $1.5 million; another, an Emily Carr, about $750,000.

Toronto’s public school board is storing Canadian artwork worth about $7 million in a secret vault, including a number from the famous Group of Seven.

Some will argue the necessity of selling them at a time the board faces a $28 million deficit – even after cutting 150 education assistants and 36 teacher-librarians – and is contemplating closing school pools. But a sell-off would be short-sighted, says board chair John Campbell.

“To see it go toward the daily running of the board – to plug holes in funding – would be a mistake,” he said yesterday. “If it went toward keeping the heat in a school one degree higher, I think people would feel they really lost something that could never be recovered.”

Trustee Josh Matlow said he heard from about 40 students and parents yesterday urging the board to sell the collection, something he does not favour. “I don’t think we should have a fire sale,” he said, “but I think it’s very reasonable to take a look at it piece by piece.”

Trustee Gary Crawford, an artist himself, argues the paintings are far more valuable to the board if they are kept and used not only for education but also for fundraising by selling prints or to secure donations and government arts grants. In fact, many pieces were donated to schools on the condition they remain board property.

The Star was given the first exclusive tour of the vault yesterday, a day after a board committee voted to approve an art “reference group,” comprising local art experts, and discussed a controversial proposal to spend $75,000 to hire a curator for a year to develop a plan to get the pieces into the open.

Since amalgamation more than a decade ago, the Toronto District School Board has grappled with how to handle its massive, 7,000-piece art collection from the previous boards, the result of decades of donations – and sometimes even sheer luck. Autumn Scene, the painting worth an estimated $1.5 million, was purchased for $50 shortly after Thomson’s death by an art teacher at Riverdale Collegiate.

That painting is now the crown jewel of the board’s collection, which took two years to catalogue and the most valuable of which are now stored in the vault.

The 18 large, upright storage walls on rollers house the pieces, some dinged or chipped from years of hanging in schools where staff did not realize their value.

The Thomson piece hung in a principal’s office until it was reclaimed by the board, although the school wants it returned. Others came in coated with nicotine from the days smoking was allowed in offices (which conservator David Sowerbutts has swabbed clean with his saliva, as is proper procedure). The Lawren Harris piece, Rossport, Lake Superior, is chipped and an Arthur Lismer was warped after being damaged in a flood four years ago. It would have been worth an estimated $750,000 in pristine condition.

“We have been working on this for awhile,” said Crawford. “We are worried about preservation and security are trying to figure out what to do … We want to get them out so students can see them.”

Greg McKinnon, the board’s archivist, oversees the collection with Sowerbutts.

Sowerbutts said having a curator would allow the board to qualify for ministry of culture grants of about $30,000 at a time – so the job could more than pay for itself.

Crawford says using the more valuable paintings to raise funds would help with the preservation and restoration of the collection. About 155 paintings alone are worth $7 million.

Several years ago, the board made prints of Franklin Carmichael’s Cranberry Lake and charged $500 apiece.

Dennis Reid, chief curator of research at the Art Gallery of Ontario and a University of Toronto professor, said the board has taken great care with its collections “which are almost invariably a part of history of each of the schools … really integral to the school and the experience of having gone there.

“It would be a great shame to lose that.”

Guitars, Not Gangs

Music education and reaching at-risk youth

By Gary Crawford

I recall attending a parent council meeting at my local school a few years ago at which a parent expressed her surprise about a seminar she had just attended. The seminar in question was about the benefits of music and music education on children and youth. Benefits leading to success – success in school, success in fostering intelligence and success in life. I remember my automatic response being, “but of course.”  Having grown up with exposure to music and the arts, I simply assumed the importance of the role of music in education.

What struck me in particular about this incident was the realization that there are many parents who are quite unaware of the positive ways in which music and music education can influence their children.    Those of us engaged in education are well aware of how important music is to the overall development, education and maturing of a child.  We see the value of music education every day in shaping young minds and hearts – preparing them for their futures, no matter what paths they choose.  However, in our advocacy of music education for all children, we tend to focus on the more traditional academic and developmentally-specific areas. 

I would like to suggest that music can be a powerful vehicle for positively influencing and benefiting at-risk and alienated children and youth.  Music can be used both within and outside the formal education system and environment as a means towards building safer and more nurturing, communities.  Using music as an outlet, an activity and a means of staying connected and in-touch with kids. Music as a means of expression and identity for kids-at-risk!

In my community, one of the main issues I deal with as an educator is how to reach marginalized and alienated youth in a positive and productive way.  Many urban as well as rural areas across Canada are faced with the issue. The headlines of the day are regularly taken up with youth violence, youth crime, gangs and kids who just don’t fit in.  Kids who “fall through the cracks” and who lack strong role models.

Much to its credit, our community , along with a number of professional and amateur sports organizations, has come forward in a concerted and very public effort to involve youth-at-risk in community sports and educational programs.  At the same time, high-profile role models from the world of sports have stepped up to the plate with the full cooperation and involvement of the sports organizations, the media, the police, community groups, multi-cultural organizations and faith-based groups.  The initiative is a huge step in the right direction and indeed, most inspiring.

But what about the kids for whom professional sports and professional sports heroes have no allure? 

I would like to propose a second front that I believe would be just as vital and could be just as successful as the sports initiative.  And that would involve reaching at-risk and marginalized youth through music. Music as a tool to “speak” to kids as well as a way for kids to “speak” to us. I do acknowledge that there are many individual programs that are very important but what is needed is a coordinated, collective initiative that brings all stakeholders together, especially the private and public sector.

One of the driving forces of youth in their pre-teen and teen years is to achieve identity. The “Who Am I” years. It is through appearance and behaviour and other outward signs that teens assert themselves. They wear their badges of identity in their choices of clothing, music, hair, group identification, risk taking, experimentation, challenging authority, gangs.

Music speaks to youth in this quest for identity like no other medium, activity or cultural form of expression.  And while it’s critical to ensure that children “receive, through their basic school curriculum, a well rounded and balanced education that includes a comprehensive, sequential, quality music program,” it is as important that the education system and curriculum seek ways to speak to youth, to motivate, engage and relate to kids. To guide and form their thoughts as they mature and develop into productive members of society.

Music is not always used to its broadest potential within the education system.  Progressive and alternative music programs as well as community-based music initiatives, much like sports, can be key elements in keeping many youth in, and engaged in, school.   Here is where we as music educators and advocates for arts education can become more involved.  And this is where I would challenge the music industry to really step up to the plate.  To spearhead a music education and involvement initiative which has the drive, support and funding equal to the current sports initiatives.

For those of us who are music educators and advocates of music education and school-based music programs, this will undoubtedly involve some shifts in the way we approach music and music education.  It may involve a change in defining what kinds of music are acceptable and expected in a school-based music program. We would need to build a gateway for kids with an attraction to music and the arts that is more accessible than the current curriculum.  We must reach youth through forms of artistic and creative expression that appeal to the language they speak – communicating through hip-hop culture or techno, dance and other forms of contemporary youth music that they identify with.  And once we’ve brought these young people through that gateway, we’ve engaged them – which is half the battle.  In the longer term, we can bring many of these same kids into the larger music program with all its promise and options.

But it’s up to music educators and the music industry, not just the government, to step up to the plate and face this challenge.  And make no mistake, it will require us to think hard, think creatively, and make some changes in our own concepts and the way we deliver music education in Ontario.

http://www.guitarsnotguns.org/Canada.html

A lesson from Barack Obama

Education is vitally important, so why not pay good teachers more, jettison the bad ones?

By MOIRA MACDONALD,  The  Toronto Sun

March 23rd, 2009

Extra pay for teachers who get results. Dumping bad teachers who never get better. Expansion of charter schools. A longer school day.

This is not a review of George W. Bush’s education policies.

These are a few ideas from a recent speech by President Barack Obama.

It was the first major speech Obama has made on education since coming to office. It was delivered nearly two weeks ago to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce — business leaders from a community whose children are often amongst the most struggling academically.

True to his campaign promises, Obama spoke of the need for high-quality, pre-schooler programs, extra money for excellent, in-demand teachers, cutting the drop-out rate and the need to focus on improvements in math and science.

But he did not shy away from hard truths — truths that would be like sticking a finger in the eye of many of those in our public education universe here.

“In a 21st-century world,” Obama said. “Where jobs can be shipped wherever there’s an Internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is now competing with a child in New Delhi, where your best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know — education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it’s a prerequisite for success.”

In this province, the last government to raise the notion of rewarding excellent teachers with better pay was the Ernie Eves Conservatives. We know what happened to them. Here’s what Obama had to say:

“Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom,” he told his audience.

Although short on detail, Obama said good teachers “will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement” and his administration would support extra pay to end a shortage of math and science teachers.

Steps must also be taken “to move bad teachers out of the classroom … if a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not improve, there’s no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.”

Obama pointed out that nations doing better academically than the U.S. (and for that matter Canada) are “spending less time teaching things that don’t matter, and more time teaching things that do.”

Some also keep their kids in class longer, such as South Korea, whose children are in school a full month more than American kids. He called for an expansion of after-school programs and a rethink on the length of the school day.

I have written recently in this space about concerns Ontario is lowering its high school graduation standards to reach an 85% graduation target by 2010. We are not alone.

Obama said states that have lowered educational standards to make it look as though more kids are getting over the bar should “stop low-balling expectations for our kids. The solution to low test scores is not lowering standards — it’s tougher, clearer standards.”

Finally, Obama said he would remove restrictions to allow expansion of the country’s charter schools. Charter schools operate within the public system, are self-governing and accountable to a charter they have signed with their state government.

In Canada, teacher unions have successfully persuaded even the most conservative politicians that charter schools are tantamount to letting McDonald’s run our schools. The U.S. meanwhile has more than 4,000 charter schools and the number is rising.

The predictable reaction by many in our edu-establishment to these ideas will be to ignore or dismiss them and say we are different or better (according to international test results that’s not quite true). But the eventual competition into which our children will be cast, like it or not, will be the same.

We ignore Obama’s ideas at our children’s peril.

MOIRA.MACDONALD@SUNMEDIA.CA

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/moira_macdonald/2009/03/23/8848421-sun.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/10/Taking-on-Education/

“Considered one of the top educators in North America, AIMS Fellow in Public Education Reform Angus McBeath is making a difference in public education. As superintendent of the public schools in Edmonton, Mr. McBeath (pronounced McBeth) lead the ongoing effort to improve student achievement in that city’s public school system. The Edmonton School Model is held as one of the finest in North America.”

“An educator for 30 years, Angus McBeath began his teaching career in 1972 in Prince Edward Island.. He is in demand across North America as a dynamic speaker with a truly remarkable story to tell about how public schools can reinvent themselves to meet the needs of a modern, diverse and demanding society where educational achievement is the key to success.”

 Please follow the links below,

Angus McBeath, AIMS Fellow in Public Education

AIMS, Education Features

http://www.aims.ca/education.asp?cmPageID=152

Choice, accountability and performance in public schools

http://www.aims.ca/education.asp?typeID=6&id=806&fd=0&p=1

I became a public school trustee 5 years ago because I firmly believe in a strong public education system. The education of our youth is one of my strongest passions. If we don’t get it right with our children they, along with society will suffer. Through this studio blog I will be posting articles of interest and intrigue about education. From articles about the importance of the arts in education to “choice” and the ability of parents to participate and decide on the kind of education they want for their children.

By: Editorial – Toronto Star, 10/19/2006

This is an edited excerpt of a speech that  Senator Hugh Segal gave at a tribute dinner for Annie Kidder of People for Education:

… We look out at a world that sometimes looks a little like it’s gone mad. Random violence in various geopolitical regions, nihilist groups determined to use the death of innocents simply to make a point, demographic pressures that force rational countries to embrace the pluralism and diversity of greater immigration, anxieties about the mix between national security and individual freedom and a rising tide of opportunity for our young people if they are well educated to take on the world in their chosen area of passion and endeavour.

Many of us ask, aside from paying our taxes and helping our own family and kids, what can we do about all this other stuff?

Well, we can support public education. …

Without a dynamic and compelling public education system we surrender one of the only real instruments for the management of diversity, the development of common cause and common equality of opportunity within our pluralist society. Without kids learning about each other, in a common setting instructed by caring, properly recognized and fairly paid teachers who reflect the best and brightest of our society, we would simply and directly be surrendering the imperatives of social cohesion and civility to the forces of fragmentation. These forces may be benign and humane and well-intentioned. But they are the forces of fragmentation. …

Public education is about our own common resolve about the future we share. And I happen to believe that when the dynamism, quality, commitment to excellence and central social standing of our public education system is in peril, so is our future together. Values that we take for granted – equality between the genders, the presumption of innocence, democracy, the rule of law, embrace of diversity and pluralism – are not universally embraced by all whose parents may come to our shores. And what we might constructively do about the parents between the time they come as refugees or landed immigrants and become fellow citizens is a discussion for another time and place. But what our policy is about the kids is clear and has been clear for more than 150 years in Ontario and Canada. It’s called public education.

And any failure on our part to invest in, to expand, to deepen and to embrace the full breadth and reach of public education is a simple failure to defend the kind of human and economic integration that is so vital to economic expansion and social progress. …

http://www.torontoalliance.ca/urban_challenges/public_education/articles.asp?articleID=918

http://www.peopleforeducation.com