As the mother of a 16-month-old boy, Michelle Usprech is looking to leave the Financial District where it’s just “suits and suits and suits,” for a more family friendly vibe, and she’s got her eye on Leslieville.

But one of Toronto’s most family-friendly neighbourhoods may be a victim of its own success as signs from the Toronto District School Board have cropped up, warning parents in Leslieville their children may not be able to attend their local school because of possible overcrowding, school board spokesperson Ryan Bird confirmed.

Those signs warn that “due to residential growth, sufficient accommodation may not be available for all students,” despite the school board making “every effort to accommodate students at local schools.”

Considered one of Toronto’s most family-friendly communities Leslieville continues to increase in density with new condo developments.

“It has a young family vibe to it,” Usprech said, a big difference from her current neighbourhood. Having grown up in the suburbs, she wants to give her son the same environment to grow up in, she added.

It’s a concern for some parents, including Kerry Sharpe, who lives in Leslieville and has a four-month-old daughter named Eisla.

“It’s still early days for me,” she said, but, “it is a concern. Even daycare, that’s hard to get into, so I don’t see it getting any better.”

But the signs are nothing new in Toronto, said Bird. The school board’s been putting them up for more than 15 years, anywhere where the “local school is close to or over capacity and may not be able to accept any additional students.”

In 2015, for example, the school board responded to the City on 110 development applications where the signs should be put up, he said.

For Ariel Litteljohn, a mother of two, the oldest of whom is attending junior kindergarten at Morse Street Junior Public School, the signs raise fears of more overcrowding in classrooms.

Usprech, though, said she isn’t worried about her son having to maybe take a bus to school.

“I know he will get an education either way,” she said.

Should classrooms start overflowing with students, Bird said the TDSB would make adjustments.

“Children in these new developments still have a home school assigned to their address although it will be outside of the local area,” he said.

That would be bad news for Sharpe, who said she’d rather not have her daughter attend a school outside of the neighbourhood.

But Jennifer Story, a school board trustee whose ward includes Leslieville, said the neighbourhood is nowhere near that point yet.

She called overcrowding in schools merely a “theoretical situation” that the school board is preparing for.

“It’s way off in the future,” Story said. “It’s something we need to keep an eye on . . . It’s not a statement that Leslieville schools are overfull right now or will be when the students that those developments generate might end up in school.”

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The worst case scenario when schools reach their capacity, she said, is adding portables, which are often the precursor to expanding schools outright to create more space.

“There are processes to make sure that we can accommodate across a cluster of schools in an area,” Story said. “As neighbourhoods intensify, we want to let people know well in advance that that might be a possibility.”

With files from Sammy Hudes