[URBAN NOTE] "Borden high school quietly closes as it celebrates 50th anniversary"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Kristin Rushowy reports on the recent closure of a Toronto school for want of students.

Four other high schools are within walking distance, and the students at Borden come from such a wide area that it’s not considered anyone’s “neighbourhood” option.

Perhaps its specialty — training teens in the trades — wasn’t as big of a draw, as many parents want their kids to focus on university.

Or maybe it’s Borden’s reputation or its location, with gang activity in surrounding neighbourhoods and a horrible mass shooting back in the summer of 2012 on nearby Danzig St. — a crime that had nothing to do with the school, but led to a rapid drop in enrolment all the same.

There are many explanations as to why Sir Robert L. Borden Business and Technical Institute went from a thriving school of almost 1,000 to just 183 today, but in the end, it was low numbers that determined its fate.

So, just a couple of weeks after celebrating its 50th anniversary, staff and students are preparing to shut down the Scarborough school for good.

“When I got here, the school had about 950 kids — it was packed,” said visual arts teacher Caron Magill, who has been at Borden for 30 years. “All the classrooms were packed; the portables, too. I was hired to teach offset lithography (printing) . . . across the hall from me was dry-cleaning, a full-blown dry-cleaning shop. Drafting was down the hall, cosmetology around the corner — hairdressing. The food school taught the kids meat-cutting and butchery, and taught them quantity baking . . . there was plumbing, construction auto mechanics, too.