I was thinking today about how the city could provide more rec centres, and it passed my mind about the possibility of having smaller community rec centres with maybe a small studio and weight room - similar to the Houston Public Library’s innovative Express branches. Then, as I turned my head and saw Sullivan Heights Secondary, I realized, we already have a ton of existing, and underutilized public infrastructure in schools!

Oddly enough, Ontario is currently following the lead of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, and studying the creation of community schools:

Instead of closing all underused schools, the group says some should be transformed into community focal points with supports for children and their families, including public libraries, mental health services, public health workers and public swimming pools.

Integrating services into schools would require policy and bureaucratic changes, Ms. Kidder said, including funding, more co-ordination between levels of government and embedding schools in municipal planning. Previous provincial reports have recommended similar measures.

Realistically, this would be a huge boon to the provision of community amenities with just a relatively small capital investment!

Just take libraries. All schools have them - many times, with much more specialized sections than the public branches (i.e. kids/teens/reference sections). All that would be required to keep them open after school is a couple staff, and perhaps a refurbishment of the building so that there is an entrance/exit separate from the entire school building. You could also look at amalgamating the City wide library service with the School district’s service for an immediate expansion of the materials available as well as added convenience for students (hate having to worry about which book goes back where). Besides, the Ministry of Education gave the School Districts partial control over city libraries, so maybe we should look more carefully at this crossover. 

Gyms are another great example. As long as there is a way to enter and exit that section of the school separately, just imagine all the sports space we would have - for clubs, tournaments, leagues, leisure, etc.!

Currently, the School District and the City have been progressively working closer together. There is a pilot project underway right now to establish several community schools. Not to mention the land trade deal that allowed the City to save Kensington Prairie. 

Now, understandably, schools are currently still used after 3pm. I would be interested to see the data on how many groups use the space and for what. If we put this next to the current demand for community amenities, along with locational stats, we could very easily deduce which areas needed what services from their schools. From there, it’s just a matter of improving coordination and increasing some funding - and there you go, a vast expansion of community services and amenities with minor overhead and very minimal cost involved!