“…Currently, the Toronto District School Board hosts 42 alternative schools and programs, making Toronto home to the largest number of publicly funded alternative schools in Canada, and arguably within North America (Bascia and Maton, 2015). A small handful of these alternative schools are top-down initiatives developed and sponsored by the district; however, most schools resulted from the grassroots thinking, organizing, and activism of local community members, parents, students, and educators (see Beattie, 2004; Levin, 1979; O’Rourke, 2012), who have sought to create school structures that are more responsive to students’ creative, intellectual, and identity-based needs than traditional schools that have tended to prioritize economic efficiency in school design and outcomes.…”