Rockridge Secondary School - Opening

Opening

Rockridge opened in September 1996, as a middle school serving grades 7-9. After the restructuring of the School District 45 in the 1998-1999 school year, elementary students stayed at their schools that were expanded to include grade 7. Rockridge then became a school for students in grades 8-10. As it had been since opening, senior secondary school students would move to West Vancouver Senior Secondary (WVSS) for their final years. The most recent change to the school population came in the 2001-2002 school year, when SD45 decided to expand Rockridge to a full senior secondary school starting the following year (it had been previously known as a junior secondary and before that a middle school). Students who were in grade 10 at that time were given the option to complete grades 11 and 12 at WVSS or stay at Rockridge as the school expanded by one grade each year until graduation in 2004. Because of the capacity of the school (which was not originally designed to hold five grades), the graduating class of 2004 was about 125 students, as opposed to the larger classes of WVSS which could number in the hundreds.