Door Days – Important Update

We are very excited about the launch of our Door Days campaign and sincerely thank the families who were so quick to jump in and contribute.

We unfortunately have been asked by the TDSB to halt the campaign and the raising of money for this project at this time.

The Board has requested additional time to further review the Howard Door project and confirm the best process and funding moving forward. We, the Friends of Howard and the school, understood we had the appropriate level of involvement by the Board prior to launching the campaign, however, there is a new team “Sustainability” at the TDSB and they would like the opportunity to review our project. This new group has a mandate to guarantee the long term success of projects by ensuring each follows all processes, approvals, communication and that all standards are met.

The good news is our project is now officially on the Sustainability project list, but as you can imagine their list is long.

The other piece of good news is the complete review will include;

1. a mechanical engineer’s assessment on the impact of closing in the classrooms from a temperature perspective (how will it impact our heating and cooling – which are problematic at Howard to begin with)
2. an assessment of the air quality and airflow
3. an assessment of all health and safety impacts (will the new enclosures contravene any current fire regulations and egress rules)
4. an assessment of current building codes impacted by the project – both our proposed plan and the existing walls and doors put up to close in the open areas

The bad news …
This project will not be undertaken this summer.  The assessments and recommendations will hopefully be complete by the fall.

Upon hearing the Board recommendations, next steps and / or funding on this project we can relaunch the campaign if necessary.

For those families who have donated, Friends of Howard Trust will hold you donations in safe keeping until the fall and we know how the project will proceed.

If you have any questions of concerns please call or email me directly or join us this Wednesday’s Home and School Association Meeting.

Thanks Aileen MacDonald