Some GTA students are already back in class. Here is why.

Students arrive for their first day back to school at an elementary school in Montreal, on Aug. 29, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi

While most students across Ontario are entering the home stretch of their summer vacations, some have already been back in the classroom for three weeks.

Roberto Sarjoo’s three children – 11-year-old Amiyana, eight-year-old Zavier, and five-and-a-half-year-old Amariya – have all attended Tony Pontes P.S. since kindergarten and are on track to complete their elementary studies there.

“All of my kids have gone to that school. They haven’t even experienced the other school calendar,” he told CP24 during an interview late last week.

Tony Pontes’ new school year started at the end of July and while it wraps up at the end of June like other schools in the Peel District School Board (PDSB) and has the same number of days of learning, the weeks it has off in between are very different from the regular school calendar.

Two other elementary schools in Peel - Roberta Bondar Public School and Ray Lawson Public School, both in Brampton - also follow the balanced school calendar model, while a fourth, Peel Alternative School Central, has a modified calendar, offering a different schedule than the traditional September to June school year.

To compensate for the shortened summer break, bala

nced calendar schools in Peel have a week off in October, three weeks off over the December holiday, another week in February and a two-week-long March Break.

Sarjoo and his family have lived in Caledon’s Southfields Village, a relatively new residential community bounded by Heart Lake Road, Highways 410 and 10 and Old School Road, for about nine years.

When they first moved into the area, Tony Pontes was under construction but they knew even then that it would be offering a balanced school calendar.

“I had previously heard about this model in the U.S. and I was curious about it. … I thought it was a pretty cool idea and I figured we could make it work,” he said.Eight years later, Sarjoo, who is the co-chair of Tony Pontes’ school council, has nothing but good things to say about his family’s experience at the school.

“It’s been a fantastic ride. It works fantastic for our family,” he said.

“The summer flies by incredibly fast. With three kids, it can be incredibly expensive to find care and camps for them.”

Sarjoo said the alternative school year has been good for his kids, as well as their teachers, as they get back in the groove faster and benefit from more frequent breaks.

“It also forces me and my wife to take a break from our 9-to-5s as well. The burnout is real,” he said.

“(This model) has given us an opportunity as a family to spend more time together throughout the year.”

For the 2025-2026 school year, the Ontario Minister of Education has approved a modified calendar for 15 schools across the province, including two in Durham, four in Peel Region, five in York Region, one in Toronto, and three in Ottawa.

Tony Pontes, which now has upwards of 700 pupils, was able to accommodate the balanced calendar model as it has a proper air conditioning system, unlike most of the schools in the PDSB, said local Trustee Stan Cameron.

“Of our 260 school buildings, 257 are without A/C,“ he told CP24, adding that if the provincial government is willing to retrofit more schools, there would surely be more boards across the province who would be willing to consider the balanced school calendar.

Cameron, a long-time educator who has served as a school trustee in Peel since 2010, said the desire for the balanced calendar school year at Tony Pontes came from the community.

“I received many calls and emails from people who were moving into the area and were interested in this model,” he said.

Cameron said he’s hoping that a yet-to-be built public elementary school in Caledon’s Mayfield West Phase 2, west of Highway 10 and north of Mayfield Road, could be a candidate for the balanced school calendar.

“I will continue to advocate for more of this model for my community. … It all fits with the board’s multi-year strategic plan for student achievement, safety and wellbeing, equity and inclusion, and community engagement,” he said.

Professor and psychologist says balanced school calendar is an ‘ideal system,’ if it can be achieved

Todd Cunningham is an associate professor at the University of Toronto in the teaching stream as well as a registered school and clinical psychologist.

He said that the balanced school calendar model is something he supports, having extensively studied issues that impact student learning as well as the impacts of the extended summer break on them.

“Especially for those with challenges, (the regular school calendar) creates a bigger divide as well as more stress for teachers,” he said.

Cunningham said he believes that the balanced model offers more consistency, which in turn is better for mental health.

“It would be more of an ideal system,” the father of two told CP24 during a recent interview.

He said this option is also more equitable as it has direct benefits for students from lower-income and newcomer families.

“It can also reduce some burnout and the ‘summer slide’ effect,” Cunningham said, pointing to the weeks that it typically takes teachers and students to get into a routine and up to speed on learning when a new school year begins.

“The brain is a muscle. After two months off, it’s not at the same level.”

Cunningham said while this model won’t solve all student literacy and numeracy challenges, it’s “one piece that can help,” adding that a significant investment of time and money is required to expand the balanced school calendar model to schools across the province.

That said, he conceded that much-needed infrastructure investments for balanced calendar schools may not be a priority for the Ontario government right now.

“There’s a lot of other bigger issues we have in our (education) system,” Cunningham admitted.

“If I had a magic wand and unlimited resources, but with limited resources, it wouldn’t be the first place I’d put my money.”

CP24 has reached out to the Ontario Ministry of Education for comment but has not heard back.