OTTAWA -- Stittsville is an area that is rapidly expanding, with many new families moving in.
It is also a community currently without a public high school.
Construction for Stittsville Secondary School is underway, and is scheduled to welcome students from grades 7 to 12 in September 2023. It will be the first secondary school in Stittsville, as part of the Ottawa Carleton District School Board.
"It’s gonna be cool, I’m excited to have a new school in the area," says 11-year-old Levi Iob, who currently attends Grade 6 at Stittsville Public School.
The area is rapidly expanding, and area Coun. Glen Gower says there are 11,000 homes planned for the Fernbank area within approximately the next 20 years.
"This is really going to become an avenue of education, along Cope Drive," Gower said at an in-person ground-breaking ceremony Thursday morning, "We’ve got the public high school behind us, down the road there’s a public elementary school, there’s also a Catholic elementary school, and a French public elementary school, in various stages of development."
That’s good news for students and parents in the area, like Levi’s mom, Jenny Guth.
"Stittsville has been booming for many years," she says. "There is a need for a new high school, because the only high school that’s actually within Stittsville is a Catholic high school; that’s Sacred Heart, and that high school is quite over populated."
To stay within the public board, many students travel to A.Y. Jackson in Kanata, or South Carleton in Richmond.
"The bus ride, I’ve heard from Stittsville to South Carleton, the high school is like a good half-hour, 45 minutes; and, in the winter, there’s that concern as well,” says Guth.
According to a press release, in 2018, the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Education announced the approval of the new Stittsville Secondary School, with a project budget of $48 million,
"The school will allow for 1,353 classroom spaces for students in Grades 7 to 12. It will offer an English with Core French program, an Early French Immersion program, and a Middle French Immersion program for Grade 7 and 8 students. It will also offer English and French Immersion programs for Grade 9 to 12 students."
Carleton MPP Goldie Ghamari says the building of this school has been an initiative the community has been working on for almost 20 years,
"The most important issue that I was hearing from families and people living in Stittsville is that they did not have a local public high school."
The school will be located along Cope Drive.
