Classes are at last in session for Barrie’s newest high school students.
Grade 9 and 10 students were at Maple Ridge Secondary School (MRSS) on Wednesday for their first day of school.
Located on Mapleview Drive East at Prince William Way, the high school has an approved capacity for 1,005 students at the 135,684-square-foot facility.
“This school actually means the world. It actually completes the ward by having elementary schools, having their own high school to feed into,” said Coun. Mike McCann, who represents this part of southeast Barrie. “This high school is going to be high performance, whether it’s sports or academics.
“And the community, quite frankly, five, six, seven years ago, they moved into the southeast end of Barrie because they wanted a high school that their children could walk to," he added.
The high school’s doors opened more than eight years after the Simcoe County District School Board received Ontario Education Ministry approval and funding for a new south-Barrie secondary school on Jan. 24, 2013.
Corry Van Nispen, the school board’s superintendent of business and facility services, said there were several reasons why it took this long for MRSS to open.
“There’s the usual process of planning. A secondary school is a large building, a large endeavour,” he said. “There is working with the local municipality, getting the appropriate approvals, obtaining the site. In this case, it was a greenfield site.
“You have to go through that whole process of getting the appropriate-sized site to put your school on. So there were a multitude of factors involved," Van Nispen added.
MRSS was scheduled to open Tuesday, but did not have an occupancy permit from the City of Barrie.
The city issued a news release late Tuesday afternoon that it had received all information required under the Ontario Building Code and had issued the occupancy permit for MRSS.
“It was just us working with the city to get occupancy, which they issued (Tuesday),” Van Nispen said.
Permits are required by law to ensure that construction meets the minimum life and fire safety requirements contained within the building code.
The school includes a three-level walkout, specialized tech rooms, two sports fields — one natural, the other artificial — and an eight-lane, all-weather track.
There continues to be some construction work done on the site, including outdoor landscaping, but it does not impact the school’s opening.
Students coming from the Hewitt’s Creek Public School, Hyde Park Public School and Algonquin Ridge Elementary School attendance areas will attend MRSS.
The new school will have only Grade 9 and 10 students for the 2021-22 academic year. Approximately 485 Grade 9 and 10 students are expected to attend MRSS this school year. Each year, Grade 9 students will be added and the 2022-23 Grade 11 class will be made up of the current Grade 10 students, then in 2023-24 these students will be the Grade 12 class, and the school will be full from Grades 9 to 12.
“We’ve done this in the past with other schools and that’s just being cognitive of the attachment that a student has to their school…so we allow them to graduate from the school that they may have started their secondary career with,” said Van Nispen. “(That 485 number) will go up and down in the coming weeks.”
“It really does complete the ward,” McCann said of MRSS. “All we need now is a shopping centre. Or a grocery store. We’re still looking for a rec centre.”
For more information on the new high school, click here.
