An Administrator’s Perspective on the Politics of Alternative Schooling in Toronto

Abstract

During the period from 1965 to 1995, Shuttleworth was an administrative change agent employed by school boards in the cities of North York, Toronto, and York. As an advocate for alternative schooling, he found himself as the person in the middle struggling to mediate between progressive community interests demanding change and school system administrators supporting the institutional status quo. In North York, it was the community school concept serving an impoverished social housing area. In Toronto and York, it was in the context of the development of policies for the initiation and governance of a variety of alternative school programs from preschool to adult education.