From The Apogee of The Glory Days To Ottawa Tech's Nadir
Beginning in the 1970s, with the growth in population of the City of Ottawa and the accelerating decentralization of education drawing students to the newer suburban schools, Ottawa Tech, along with several other highly regarded core city schools, began to lose popularity and enrollment. Ottawa Tech had, historically, never ceased to train the much-needed skilled trades personnel, but during the 1970s the academic side diminished, culminating with only 10% of students continuing on to university. With the concomitant expansion of immigration into Ottawa, some 30% of the students enrolling at Ottawa Tech were in English as a Second Language. As in the surrounding community, Ottawa Tech experienced linguistic and racial divisions within its population, which further exacerbated declining enrollment. In the early 1980s the school was heavily renovated and in 1984 the High School of Commerce was closed and business programs were added to Ottawa Tech. These changes failed to encourage students to choose the school. By the early 1990s enrollment in the school fell to only 450 students and the 1991-1992 school year saw only 40 new students arrive. The Ottawa Board of Education thus decided to close the school and it was shuttered in May 1992.
The five acre (20,000 m²) campus is still owned by the board of education. It houses offices, special events, and storage, but much of it is empty. The TFO series Science Point Com is filmed in the empty classrooms. The board has been pressured to sell the buildings, which in 1999 were valued at over $10 million. However the board has decided to keep the school. The facility is in good condition and many on the board feel its central location is the ideal location to someday open a new specialist school.
On June 9, 2009, local media news reports said that the site may be chosen as a location for a new downtown branch of the Ottawa Public Library.
Read more about this topic: Ottawa Technical High School
Famous quotes containing the words from the, apogee, glory, days and/or nadir:
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—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“The studio has become the crucible where human genius at the apogee of its development brings back to question not only that which is, but creates anew a fantastic and conventional nature which our weak minds, impotent to harmonize it with existing things, adopt by preference, because the miserable work is our own.”
—Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)
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—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The seventh day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Seven swans a-swimming.”
—Unknown. The Twelve Days of Christmas (l. 34–36)
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—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)