There was extremely poor turnout for the first two scheduled information meetings about Toronto’s Africentric School. In fact only a handful of people turned out. The third meeting took place very close to the location of the school at Sheppard Avenue just west of Keele Street and over 100 people attended. Who is getting the blame for poor attendance at the first 2 meetings? The Toronto District School Board. Africentric School supporters say that lack of publicity is the reason for the poor turnout in spite of the fact that the Toronto District School Board has printed thousands of brochures about the school and dropped them in West Indian stores, community centres, and taken ads out in community newspapers. Are they nuts? The news and the controversy about Toronto’s Africentric School stirred up a tempest in a teapot and made front page news in all media for months. You would have had to recently materialize from Mars not to be aware of the Africentric School. What more publicity was required? And why isn’t the very community who made enough noise to make this school a reality, making the same amount of noise to promote it? The reality is that the first 2 meetings took place in Scarborough and Rexdale and clearly parents felt that they were too far geographically from the Africentric School.

In order for the Africentric School to open there needs to be at least 40 students enrolled - two classrooms of about 20 students each in two consecutive grades between kindergarten and Grade 5. Registration opened over a month ago and so far less than 20 students have enrolled. The school may not open at all unless there is a sudden enrollment blitz. The Toronto District School Board is asking parents to please enroll their children by January 9th so that they can proceed with hiring the staff needed to operate the school. Students will be accepted after January 9th. Families can register their children online.