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#Why did enrollment at the school drop. Interviews with Sharon Thurston, Pat Hipgrave, Amalia Kartsonis, Coleen McIntyre, Andy Sampagna
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00:00Basically what happened, when I went there in 1970 to teach, there were 2,300 students, about 150 people on the staff, 14 portables in addition to the building that existed.
00:17Over the 10 years, from 1970 to 1980, the school population gradually fell due to the fact that our parents were still living in their houses and no longer had school-age kids.
00:35So that age group or that generation was not moving out of the area and therefore no one was moving into the area.
00:45And so the school population was falling and it must have been sometime in the 80s when the first discussion of closure was going on.
00:57And of course it wasn't happening just at Midland, it was happening in all of the high schools in the southern part of Scarborough.
01:05Anyway, there was a huge hue and cry that arose at Midland.
01:11I can remember as one of the people on the staff at that time going up to the Scarborough board offices and sitting in the board meetings and there was plea after plea.
01:27Students would speak to the school board, the trustees, parents, teachers, former students, and the most heartfelt things were coming from these people about what Midland Collegiate had done for either them personally or for their children or for the neighborhood or as a staff person.
01:57And it turned the tide, it changed the board's decision.
02:04They did not close Midland or any of the other schools at that time.
02:08They decided to let them run.
02:10Was there any effect when we moved from what were the academic, the commercial, and the tech courses to a general level kind of course where the shops were used as much?
02:22Yes, I think that was a factor.
02:25There was definitely a decline in the shop use and certainly in the staffing of the school, the shop teachers were often the ones that were on the surplus list because of course people did not want to see their kids going into what they considered these blue collar jobs.
02:48They didn't stop to think about the fact that you do need somebody to fix your car and now your computer.
02:57Not everybody can be a computer engineer.
03:00Some people have to fix the darn things.
03:02There was one question that intrigued me about the drop in enrollment at the school.
03:11The school population had not only dropped, it had also radically changed.
03:15Was the fact that Midland and its neighborhood now attracted so many recent immigrants a factor, directly or indirectly, in its closing?
03:26I tried to find some people from the generation between the 60s and today, people who graduated in the 80s or early 90s and who could tell me about the transition.
03:39After an article appeared in the Scarborough Mirror about this project, I was contacted by Colleen McIntyre, who put me in touch with the student leaders of her generation, the Cartzonis sisters, Liz and Amalia, and an ex-football captain and student council president, Andy Samponia.
03:55Okay, well, my name is Amalia Cartzonis, and I was a Midland student from 1985 to 1990.
04:03So, a good five years at the school.
04:06You did grade 13, right?
04:07Yes, I did.
04:08Okay.
04:09You had to do grade 13 at the time to proceed.
04:11Well, it was called OAC.
04:12OAC, exactly.
04:13To proceed into university.
04:15And that's where you proceeded?
04:17That's where I proceeded.
04:18I went to York University afterwards as a communications major.
04:23And?
04:23I'm Colleen McIntyre.
04:26I went to Midland from 1985 to 1989, and I didn't take any OACs because I wasn't planning on going to university.
04:35I, after, went on to college and studied radio and TV broadcasting.
04:42I've been staring in front of a computer for the last three hours, so my mind is blank.
04:47So, let's do that again.
04:48Can you tell me your name, please, and when you were at Midland?
04:51Certainly.
04:51My name is Andy Sampoña, and I'm a Midland alumnus.
04:56I commenced at Midland.
05:00Actually, commencement, I shouldn't be saying that, should I?
05:02I started at Midland, you could say.
05:04Like, I'm just going to say, from 86 to 1990.
05:08Well, I started out just basically taking general studies and really didn't have a focus or goals in mind, but I wanted to succeed.
05:19I wanted to go to university.
05:21From grade nine, I joined the student council and followed my student council career right up into student council president in my last two years.
05:30And in that time as well, while I was playing sports, I've always showed leadership abilities.
05:37And I was always called upon to captain either the hockey team or the football team or the rugby team.
05:44You were in all of these?
05:45I was involved in all sports.
05:48All sports.
05:48Curling, from curling to baseball.
05:51Let's go, Jerry, let's go, Jerry!
05:53Go, go, go, go!
05:55We were talking about the drop in school population, so it went from what to what, more or less?
06:02I mean, it doesn't have to be the...
06:03When we entered, it was probably at 1,700.
06:08This was 85, right?
06:09This was 85, and by the time I graduated in 90, I would say a good 800 students at that time.
06:18You would guess that it lost about 1,000 students over the five years?
06:21Yes.
06:22Okay, so one reason, demography.
06:25Yes, definitely.
06:26But was it the only reason?
06:28No, I don't think that was the only reason.
06:30I just think that the schools definitely cater to a different demographic, obviously.
06:37We had a lot of ESL students.
06:39We introduced a basic level program.
06:42We had advanced general, and then a basic level program was introduced when we were, I believe, in grade 10 or 11.
06:47And I think that hindered Midland's reputation of becoming a very high academically inclined school.
06:55Plus, we had lost a lot of money for sports and extracurricular activities.
06:59Not enough money was being supported for our school teams.
07:04So I think that also, if you're a student wanting to find a really great high school, have a great experience, I think in the late, mid to late 80s, Midland wasn't the place to go for a grade, to play football, to play soccer, because you wouldn't get a scholarship.
07:20Because not a lot of agents would come.
07:22And I think the same academically, because there's a lot of ESL students, a lot of basic level students, and the more focus was on the ESL, because of the demographic, that there's only very few students taking advanced courses.
07:37A lot of them taking general courses.
07:38So it was not a school to be catered or promoted as a high academic or high sports.
07:47So what does that mean?
07:47That means that the kids who wanted the academic qualifications went to King, or the kids who wanted the sports went to Churchill?
07:56Yeah, exactly.
07:57How did it?
07:58King was very popular.
08:00Sports was also Porter.
08:02Churchill.
08:04Wexford was a big one, too, for arts.
08:07And those are the ones that really stick out in my mind.
08:11So in fact, what's happening is that schools are competing for students, basically?
08:14Yes.
08:15Is that what it is?
08:15I think so.
08:16Yeah.
08:18The basement of our school, a lot of the classes, that basement was notorious for shop classes.
08:26And then as soon as when the basic level and the ESL students came in, the whole basement was taken over by those classes.
08:32And I felt there was kind of a hierarchy or structure taking place here.
08:39That's how I felt.
08:40Nobody really associated with those students taking the basic.
08:43The basic and ESL students stuck together in the click.
08:47And there was a distinct separation I witnessed during the latter years before I graduated.
08:53It wasn't evident when I was in from 85 to 87 because those programs were not introduced at that time.
09:01And they trumped a lot of students in as well from other schools.
09:05Yes.
09:07For the ESL programs.
09:08Exactly.
09:09Before I arrived, in terms of athletics, the school was fairly strong.
09:15In my first two years at Midland, our football teams did really well and the atmosphere around football and a lot of the guys were great.
09:25In the last couple of years, it just sort of fell apart and programs started to cancel.
09:32We didn't have issues with strikes like they do nowadays, but we just had issues of just trying to get bodies out to play a lot of these sports or, for that matter, join the athletic and student councils.
09:47So this was the result of the declining enrollment?
09:51I agree.
09:51I believe it was.
09:52At the time, the school adopted a basic program as well.
09:58And prior to that, it was just basically general and advanced studies.
10:03But the hope was, and I'm guessing here, was to increase enrollment by allowing basic studies into the school.
10:11And that might have done two things at the school that might have helped it, which I don't think it had, or it might have brought a certain element to the school that might have caused a decline.
10:28I mean, these students at times were very disruptive and weren't really there to school.
10:35Somebody was telling me about segregation of the school population, that sort of stuff.
10:39That's exactly what occurred.
10:40And, I mean, and the basic studies was just part of it.
10:46But it was also just, you know, part of the Scarborough's population at the time.
10:51And it was certainly, it's a changing area.
10:54And a lot of the population base that used to attend Midland in terms of ethnicities, Italians, the Greeks, the white Anglo-Saxons, had just, you know, moved on into the regions.
11:09And a lot of the population, you know, Midland's population just didn't play sports or didn't participate in school life and school activity.
11:17So it would make school life very boring, very dry.
11:22And hence, if school's, you know, not a place, I mean, obviously it's a place, you know, to educate yourselves.
11:30But it's also a place to, you know, to remain social and to hang out with your friends and to enjoy yourself.
11:38It's a learning experience, you know, whether it be academic or whether it be social.
11:44It's an experience you have to enjoy.
11:45And it just wasn't enjoyable.
11:49Was violence a problem?
11:50There have been stories.
11:51It depends on the person you talk to there.
11:53Some people who say that there was a problem with violence and some people say there's no problem with violence.
11:57Well, I don't think violence really, it didn't really happen.
12:01Like, it didn't really happen to our group of people.
12:04But, I mean, there was a lot of violence there.
12:06I mean, we've seen fights in the washrooms.
12:09Fights in the hallway right in front office.
12:10I saw a girl actually put a guy's head through the trophy case one day and there was a lot of violence.
12:18Yeah, I saw one guy getting stabbed by another right in the front hallway as soon as you walk into the school.
12:22There was always fights at those dances, too.
12:24Every dance there was a fight.
12:26Every dance there was a fight.
12:28I can't think of any weapons being used, but definitely a lot of fists were flying.
12:32And the fights were between who and who and what was the stake?
12:35I mean, what were they fighting about?
12:36There was a lot of times guys from other schools would come and fight with our guys.
12:43I wouldn't say it was gang-related or anything like that.
12:46I think it was just a fight of egos or girlfriends.
12:51Yeah.
12:51Girls were a lot of causes, a lot of fights.
12:54Yes.
12:54But I remember one dance we had, there was a rock thrown through.
12:59We used to have the dance in the cafeteria.
13:01That's right.
13:01And there was a rock thrown through the window and somebody got injured because the rock hit them in the head.
13:06And those dances were a lot of fun.
13:10Besides the violence that we witnessed and all the fights.
13:13But at the end of the day, they stopped doing these dances, didn't they?
13:16Yes, they did.
13:17And they started having them in the gym after.
13:19Exactly.
13:20And a lot earlier, too.
13:22They weren't at night anymore.
13:24Yeah.
13:25No, they were like Friday afternoon or something after school.
13:27Yes, after school.
13:28And then, of course, who wants to go to a dance after school?
13:29That was the problem with the morale thing again.
13:33A lot of people just didn't want to go because it was in the afternoon.
13:37And it wasn't as fun because it wasn't in the cafeteria anymore, you know.
13:40And it was closed in.
13:43You couldn't see outside.
13:45And you couldn't come and go as you pleased.
13:49Yeah.
13:49Yeah, they started becoming very strict and very stringent about a student's activities
13:57and how one has to present themselves or walk down the hallway.
14:01I understand.
14:01Who's the they?
14:02Teachers.
14:03The principals.
14:04The staff.
14:04The staff.
14:05I think it was out of fear.
14:06They want, and they also want to maintain control of the school.
14:10That would also turn a lot of students off from going there as well.
14:12And I understand a year after I graduated, they started implementing a hall pass program.
14:18And that was never heard of when we were there.
14:20No, no.
14:20We were, if you were in the hallway, you were questioned why you were there, but never given
14:24a hall pass.
14:25I think that they were trying to maintain a control of the students.
14:30And by implementing such methods of having dances in the afternoon and having hall passes
14:37so no violence or bad behavior would erupt.
14:42But I think that hindered a lot of students from actually having fun and from other students
14:46coming in and saying, wow, I'd like to go to this great school.
14:49So again, I think that hindered the reputation of the school altogether.
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