The 101 on new London high schools built since the 1990s

If it was a hockey game, the score would be 5 to 1 for the smaller team.

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With Thursday’s announcement that one of London’s oldest Catholic high schools, Regina Mundi, will be rebuilt from scratch with a new $51 million building, the separate school board will have built four new high schools in London since the 1990s and rebuilt another.

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By comparison, the much larger public school board has built no new city high schools over the same period and done only one massive rebuild, although smaller upgrades to other schools have been made. The public board’s last new high school in London opened more than 50 years ago (Saunders, 1972).

Why such a lop-sided construction scoresheet for the London District Catholic and Thames Valley District school boards, both of which are dealing with growing enrollment?

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The answer involves a bit of history, a growing city and the process that school boards have to go through with Queen’s Park to make a case for the province to fund new schools.

Because both school boards are district systems, created in the 1990s as school boards were merged, their schools extend beyond London into Middlesex, Oxford and Elgin counties. In London, the public board has 12 high schools and the Catholic board six. The last new public high school built in London was Saunders secondary school. One of Ontario’s largest high schools, it was completed in 1972. Another, HB Beal, had a massive, $50-million rebuild in 1999. At least seven of the board’s other London high schools – including AB Lucas, Banting, Oakridge and Westminster – date back to the 1950s and ’60s.

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The last new Catholic high school built in London was St. Andre Bessette, which opened in 2013 and was built to relieve overcrowding elsewhere. In the 20 years and change before then, going back to 1991, three other new Catholic high school buildings opened – Mother Teresa, St. Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II, joining the 1950s-era Catholic Central in the city’s downtown.

How Ontario funds education is a big part of the answer about why new Catholic high schools have been built in London, and across the province, in recent decades. Until the mid-1980s, Ontario didn’t fully fund the Catholic education system, only the public system. All that changed in 1985, when, in a policy reversal, and while it was facing a Supreme Court challenge over its stand on education funding, Queen’s Park agreed to extend full public funding to Catholic schools through to Grade 13, the fifth year of high school that no longer exists. Before that, Catholic students were funded only into the early years of high school, which meant teens going on to graduate in Catholic boards paid tuition to attend what were effectively private schools. Many Catholic families instead send their children to public high schools. Known as “full funding,” the provincial change was phased in and gave the public and separate systems equal status and support, opening the door for new high schools. Population growth added to that demand.

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Both London-area boards have growing enrollment, so much so that newly built schools are often already full by the time they open and even have overflow portable classrooms on site. The lag time between new schools approved and built is that great. Much of the growth is in elementary schools, but that soon reaches the secondary level, adding to the strain on high schools already full. Thames Valley officials weren’t available for comment, but the board has said it’s eyeing a new high school, optimally in the city’s burgeoning northwest. Before that can happen, however, and the government be asked to approve a new school, the board has to complete a review to make sure it has maximized use of existing high schools, ironing out imbalances between those that are full and those that are not . That process, including boundary changes that would affect where some students go to school, is still before the school district’s board of trustees.

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At the Catholic board, executive superintendent Debbie Jordan said schools are already operating at capacity amid growing enrollment, with “very limited space.” Regina Mundi College – it began life as a junior seminary – wasn’t originally built as a high school, but the board needs one there to meet the needs of today’s students, she said. Jordan also said the board is hoping to get approval for a new high school in the city’s growing north end.

Bill Tucker said he can’t say for sure why more Catholic high schools have been built in London than public ones lately, but that school boards have to make rock-solid cases for new schools before the province will approve them and the Catholic board has succeeded at that. “When a school board makes a business case for a new secondary school, the (education) ministry wants to know that the school board is maximizing dollar use and maximizing empty spaces in current secondary schools,” said Tucker, a Western University education professor and a former education director at the Thames Valley board. “School boards have to prove that there are actually bums in seats,” he said. “That’s why the public school board is going through an accommodation review, trying to rejig the boundaries for secondary schools, because they have to make a business case to the ministry” before a new school can be approved.

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The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the government of Canada.

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