Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies

Beginnings

The Re-entry Program in Scarborough began in November 1977 at Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute with one teacher and fifteen students. Envisioned was a program which would meet the needs of dropouts or disadvantaged learners wishing to return to school; the program had grown and transformed into an adult program. By 1985, the program featured 9.33 teachers and 200 students.

In 1980, the Co-Op Re-entry Program was established. The program featured an in-school component with a job experience placement and grew from the original two teachers and 35 students to 5 teachers and 170 students in 1986.

Formerly known as Tabor Park Vocational School, the Re-entry Programs were united and expanded as Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies originally opened on September 2, 1986 at 959 Midland Avenue operated by the Scarborough Board of Education with 360 adults. At Tabor Park, agencies operating at SCAS included a rooms registry service called Scarborough Housing Assistance: Placement and Education for Singles (SHAPES), the counseling service Metro Youth Services, a day care facility operated by NYAD (Not Your Average Day Care), and the board's Community Liaison Office.

Relocation

In May 1988, the SBE was planning to move the SCAS to a new facility. The Tabor Park campus was one of seven high schools in the Metro being given to the Metropolitan Separate School Board (now the Toronto Catholic District School Board), so the Scarborough board had to vacate it along with the user groups. School board trustees considered closing one of the following collegiate schools to make room for a new SCAS: Winston Churchill, Midland, Wexford, W.A. Porter, and David and Mary Thomson. In November 1988 the school had 850 adult students. Parents in Donwood Park protested one of the relocation plans for SCAS.

Meanwhile, the SBE moved classes as a method to quickly find a temporary location before the Tabor Park property being transferred to the MSSB on July 1, 1989. To save the costs, 28 classes were moved to the former Highbrook Senior Public School on 39 Highbrook Crescent, Thomson Collegiate received 20 classes at 2740 Lawrence Avenue East (along with the Carpentry program) and moved the remaining six to a commercial site in the area totaling to 54 classes.

The original SCAS campus was reopened and became known as Jean Vanier Catholic Secondary School in September 1989. The need for a new adult school led to a 'unique partnership' between the SBE and Centennial College, in 1992, to establish the new campus for SCAS, (originally the Scarborough Career Planning Centre) on 939 Progress Avenue that opened in September 1994. The programs were previously had been in temporary locations after the loss of Tabor Park.

After 16 years, in September 2010, the school moved to 720 Midland Avenue, the site of the former Midland Avenue Collegiate Institute as Centennial expanded the teaching space by acquiring the latter site. The centre currently shares the Midland building with South East Year Round Alternative Centre and Caring and Safe Schools program.

Overview

Like all TDSB adult learning centres, it has two distinctive programs, EdVance and Adult.

The Under 21 program, EdVance is for students between 18 and 20 years of age who feel the world is passing them by because they have discontinued their formal education before obtaining a high school diploma. Supported in a nurturing environment, there is an emphasis on re-entry to school. Students will have an opportunity to build skills for the workplace, college or apprenticeship programs. EdVance is for students who are serious about completing high school. This program offers the swiftest route to earning an OSSD. The program was previously known as the Retention Program.

Campus

Since the school is located in the Midland Avenue Collegiate Institute facility in 2010, SCAS currently occupies some parts of the first floor, most parts of the second floor, and the entire third floor space. The school carries many modernist design features consisting of five stairwells, a circular cafeteria, a two floor library with two seminar rooms, wide guidance area, larger atrium, a theatre with more than 900 seats, 33 academic classrooms, two home economics rooms, one large lecture hall, four performing art rooms for music/dance/drama, two visual art rooms, five science labs, three gymnasia with the larger one that can be partitioned into two smaller gyms with SCAS occupying the larger gym, and large athletic field as well the track and football/soccer fields with an attached hill. The swimming pool remains partly leased.

Historically, the school was attached by a day care centre, Not Your Average Daycare, and continues to do so today.

As the Progress Campus built in the lands of Centennial College, the school was built in a triangular configuration and students would get lunches from the college's cafeteria. Previously, SCAS had lunch service at the Tabor Park campus.

Alternative Scarborough Education 1

Alternative Scarborough Education 1 (ASE 1) is an alternative school originally affiliated with SCAS. Founded in 1975, the school shares the space with St. Andrew's Public School on the second floor.

Delphi Secondary Alternative School

Delphi Secondary Alternative School, formerly known as Alternative Scarborough Education 2 is an alternative school located in the second floor of the Chartland Junior Public School building. The school was founded in 1981 and in 2006, it was renamed to Delphi

Parkview Alternative School

Parkview Alternative School was originally established in the 1990s as a SCAS-branded campus known as SCAS Overflow in the former Highbrook Senior Public School building providing the alternative education for dropouts. In 2010, the school was renamed to the Overflow Centre and moved to the Terraview Learning Centre building in the Pharmacy Avenue/401 area. As of 2014, it then adopted the present name.