Midland Avenue Collegiate Institute

The former Midland Avenue Collegiate Institute, today Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies

Midland Avenue Collegiate Institute was a public high school in Scarborough, Ontario. It opened in 1962 for the then Scarborough Board of Education and later under the Toronto District School Board. The school is large and typical of high schools built in the baby boom generation of the 1950s and 1960s. It included many modernist design features including a circular cafeteria that looked onto Midland Avenue, a two floor library, and a theatre with more than 900 seats. Other features included a large gym and swimming pool, and a large multi-car automobile repair hangar/repair shops with four garage doors that most schools did not have.

School Closing

The school closed in 2000. As with most schools in the Toronto area, Midland experienced a sharp shift after the mid and late 1980s due to an overall lower birth rate of the overall population. Starting in the early 1990s, the school body had also undergone a demographic shift from an influx of new immigration to the nearby area. This was accompanied and complicated by a drop in attendance from students who lived in the area, who starting in the mid 1980s chose to go other schools such as Winston Churchill C.I.

When Scarborough became a part of Toronto in 1999, The Scarborough Board of Education became part of the new Toronto District School board, one of the largest on the continent. Changes in the new funding structure caused the creation of a short-list of 138 schools in Toronto proposed to be closed. The list was a reaction to a creation of a funding formula based on students per square footage of the school, which prompted debate over the issue rather than the actual closure of the schools. Since the physical building was large, and the population was smaller, it was placed high on the list. This ultimately became justification for closing the school. The closing can be ultimately summed up due to a School Trustee who did not support the teachers and residents' wishes, a lack of civic participation, and a lack of knowledge and participation of new immigrants.

Midland operated for quite a number of years as the Bond Education Group, a private school leasing the facility from the Toronto District School Board. While public tax dollars goes to education and upkeep of local schools, the public is generally unaware and not usually kept informed of what happens to public properties like school buildings, once a school is closed. While many might have thought the building was outright sold, it seems as if it was just leased to the Bond Education Group, possibly a ten year lease.

Reopening and relocation of Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies

As of 2011, without much fanfare or general community knowledge the Toronto District School Board has since reoccupied the building, and has moved the Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies, (alternative high school education/ adult high school education) from its location at Centennial college to the building.

Notable alumni

• Jay C. Hope - Commissioner of Emergency Management Ontario and Community Safety, Deputy Minister of Correctional Services; former Deputy Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police
• The Honourable David C. Onley, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario
• His Honour Judge Bill Hastings, former Chief Censor of New Zealand
• Tom Vassos, - Ambassador, Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance

External links

	Toronto portal
	Schools portal

• Midland Avenue C.I. - A video about Midland and other high schools in the Scarborough area.

Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies.

References

• "Why us? Midland students ask ; High school can fit 1,358 students but has only 650;" Tanya Talaga. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Apr 27, 1999. pg. 1