The Scarborough Board of Education (SBE, commonly known as School District 16), formally the Board of Education for the City of Scarborough was the public-secular school district serving Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. The board was founded in 1954 through a merger of the Scarborough Collegiate and Township School Boards.
As of 1996, the SBE had served over 81,000 students and 8,300 employed staff. It was the largest school board in the former Metro Toronto.
In 1998, the SBE was merged into the Toronto District School Board. The former SBE offices in Borough Drive. remain in use by the TDSB as the East Education Office.
History
Scarborough's first schools were scattered across: Hough's Corners (SS#8 were Alexander Muir once taught) West Hill (SS#16) Woburn (SS#6) L'Amoreaux at Birchmount and Finch (SS#1) Ellesmere Village at Kennedy and Ellemere (SS#5 built 1871 replaced a school at Midland and Ellesmere from 1848) Hillside (SS#12 in 1853) Finch/McCowan (SS#2 or later as A. P. Wheeler School). Scarborough Village (SS#9 in 1847 and successor was Scarborough Village PS in 1913)
Around 1913 to 1916, more schools were added:Bonis, Robert R. A History of Scarborough (1968) Southwest Scarborough (Birch Cliff or SS#15) Scarborough Village (replaced SS#9) Agincourt at Midland north of Sheppard (SS#14)
In need for secondary education, Agincourt Continuation School was established in 1915 in the elementary school building while senior grades were done in Markham District High School. However, by 1919, many students in south Scarborough had attended Malvern Collegiate Institute in East Toronto, which became a reality in 1922 when Scarboro High School opened its doors with classic specialist Dr. Reginald H. King as principal, three teachers and 116 pupils.
By the early 1940s the public school inspector for Scarborough, H. A. Halbert, initiated a movement to amalgamate these small school sections to form Township School Areas known as the Scarborough Township Public School Board, each with a Board of five Trustees, which would be better able to meet Scarborough's modern educational needs. Between 1944 and 1947, the township board was divided into three areas:
Area 1: Southwest Scarborough (School sections 10, 12, 13, 15) Area 2: Central Scarborough (School sections 7, 8, 9, 16 – Area 6 joined in 1953) Area 3: North Scarborough (School sections 5 and 14)
Towards the end of 1953, there were 32 schools with 13,227 students and 356 teaching staff.
On January 1, 1954, The Collegiate and Township Boards merged into the new Scarborough Board of Education. Dr. King, the principal of Scarborough C.I. became the first Director of Education. As the architecture of these new schools was simple, functional and unpretentious, the earlier models were sometimes subject to criticism as bearing too close a resemblance to long, low factory buildings. However, as school succeeded school, their style and appearance was progressively improved. In some of the more recent buildings distinctions have begun to emerge. Residents accustomed to the bare brick schoolhouses of the rural period see updates in the latest modern school buildings composed of glass, steel, and brick. New features include: kindergarten classrooms with heated floors, libraries, manual training and household science rooms, rooms for nurses and teachers, spacious dual purpose gymnasiums and auditoriums with stages, and modern equipment such as motion picture projectors, tape recorders and even television sets. Many children are also transported daily to school in school buses; which ends the era of the day of the long walk to school despite weather conditions.
With overcrowding at Scarborough Collegiate Institute and Agincourt High School, they were incapable of coping with the crowds of students seeking secondary education. This led to the construction of its third high school Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute, named after Winston Churchill, on Kennedy and Lawrence in the Dorset Park area on December 4, 1953, with the first 657 pupils admitted on September 7, 1954. One year later, West Hill Collegiate Institute on Morningside Avenue in West Hill opened on September 6, 1955, to 376 students. That year it was also necessary to enlarge Agincourt Collegiate Institute by the addition of seventeen rooms and a gymnasium.
Then followed in rapid succession the building of four more great secondary schools to meet the need for accommodation for 1,200 more students each year. In 1958, W. A. Porter Collegiate Institute –whose school named after the science master and assistant principal of Scarborough's first High School for many years from its opening in 1922 – was completed on Fairfax Crescent in the Clairlea district. To it was later added a notable new feature, an indoor swimming pool, the first of its kind in Scarborough. In 1959, the David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, a 1,200 pupil school costing $1,728,400.00, was constructed on Lawrence Avenue a short distance west of the first settler's home in the forests of 1796.
Next in 1960, the SBE's most ambitious venture in secondary education, the huge Cedarbrae Secondary School, was built at a cost of over $3,500,000.00, on the hillside overlooking the site of Peter Secor's grist mill of 1830, on the west side of the Markham Road. Designed as a composite school, it offered a wide variety of courses, Arts and Science, Commercial, Technical and Trades; and it included well equipped vocational shops, gymnasiums, swimming pool, auditorium with professionally lighted and curtained stage, and numerous other modern school facilities. The school was opened in September 1961. However, its eighth composite secondary school, Midland Avenue Secondary School opened in 1962. Like Cedarbrae, the school was equipped with an auditorium with seats, large rounded circular cafeteria, triple gymnasium, swimming pool and several commercial and technical shops.
The combined enrollment of 11,470 students and a staff of 526 teachers in eight collegiate institutes and the construction of yet more schools was in progress. On Ellesmere and Markham the basic high steel framework and long brick walls of the great new Woburn Collegiate Institute were rising behind the little red brick schoolhouse of 1863, from whose belfry had rung the call to classes that took generations of pupils from the farms of School Section No.6. The new Woburn C.I. admitted its first students the next autumn; and on Midland Avenue and Lawrence, Bendale Vocational School, planned especially for the benefit of students who normally drop out of school before completing Grade 12 or even 10, was also opened in 1963. The next year, 1964, Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute, built on the ridge overlooking Birch Cliff – which was once the shore of Lake Iroquois in ancient glacial times – and is attached to Birchmount Stadium, and the Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate Institute (formerly O'Sullivan Secondary) on Pharmacy Avenue north of Sheppard, were completed.
Above the great bluffs towering up from the lake at Guildwood Village, where land once sold for six York shillings or seventy-five cents an acre in 1803, the Board of Education acquired fourteen and one-fifth acres at a cost of $303,700 for another school, and there the building of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute was begun in the latter part of 1964. At the beginning of 1965, on Midland Avenue north of Eglinton, the walls of the Tabor Park Vocational School, named after one of Scarborough's early schoolmasters, were built up to the second story; and work on the new Wexford Collegiate Institute on Pharmacy Avenue north of Lawrence was well advanced. There were now 15,000 students enrolled in Scarborough's secondary schools, and 761 teachers on the staff.
The SBE in September 1968, found itself responsible for the education of about 78,000 students, enrolled in more than 100 elementary and secondary schools. Some schools were surrounded by as many as 10 and 12 portables, and the total number of such temporary classrooms in use was 257. But while called on to wrestle continually with the accommodation issue, a building programme which never quite catches up with the spiralling growth of the Borough, and a budget requiring a tax levy of nearly 40 million dollars, the Board of 1968 still finds time to escape from the rut of routine business and explore new ground. Under the far-sighted leadership of its chairman, Muriel A. Clarke, and the dynamic Director of Education, Anson S. Taylor, the Board introduced a concept of new tri-level system of together with a Secondary School on a common campus. One such campus is now in operation in the Bendale Secondary School area; and a yet more imaginatively conceived three-school community was under construction on the Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute site on Birchmount Road north of Sheppard Avenue as well as Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute on Lawrence and Centennial in Rouge Park. Both schools were opened in 1970. Its keen interest in training for young people unable to progress academically beyond public school still continues; and another well equipped Vocational School, three and a half million dollar Maplewood Vocational School, was opened in 1968 despite a year delay on Galloway Road in West Hill. However, in 1966, Sir Robert L. Borden Secondary School opened its doors.
By the beginning of the 1970s, the Scarborough community began to develop. In 1973, L'Amoreaux Collegiate Institute, located near School Section No. 1, was built on Warden and Finch and designed by Raymond Moriyama. The school was built with a forum and cafetorium in place of the auditorium to save costs. By 1976, Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute was opened on Finch and McCowan. This was followed by the three-level Lester B. Pearson Collegiate Institute in 1978 in the Malvern district and its final collegiate Dr. Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute, on the Warden/Steeles area, was opened in 1979. Meanwhile, two more technical schools, Timothy Eaton Secondary School, named after Timothy Eaton was opened on Finch and Warden in 1971 and Sir William Osler Vocational School was opened on Huntingwood and Midland in Agincourt in 1975.
As of 1985, there were over 160 elementary schools and 25 secondary schools.
In the first of its kind in Scarborough, inspired by George S. Henry Academy, the SBE had converted R. H. King Collegiate Institute into R. H. King Academy in September 1989. The new academy functioned as a quasi-private school enrolling students from out of area and the school featured clinics, mentorships and mandatory school uniforms.
In 1992, the SBE and the Centennial College made a deal to establish an adult education centre, the Scarborough Career Planning Centre, at the Centennial College.Boyle, Theresa. "Adult education centre will be constructed at Centennial College." Toronto Star. January 23, 1992. Scarborough/Durham SD p. 4. Retrieved on October 8, 2013. In 1994 the entities agreed to establish the centre there beginning in the fall of that year.Deverell, John. "'One-stop' career training centre." Toronto Star. January 27, 1994. Scarborough/Durham SD p. 3. Retrieved on October 8, 2013.
Plans were made to conduct the Scarborough Alternative For Educating Troubled Youths (SAFETY) program in 1994. The program was designed for students with twenty-day suspensions, the maximum period possible, in the former Highbrook Senior Public School facility. Community protests put these plans on hold and were never materialized.Josey, Stan. "Class for suspended students on hold Community concern about program voiced at meeting." Toronto Star. June 30, 1994. Scarborough/Durham SD p. 6. Retrieved on October 8, 2013. Currently, the SAFETY program was later evolved into the TDSB's Caring and 'Safe School' programs.