| Victoria Park Collegiate Institute | |
|---|---|
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| Location | |
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15 Wallingford Road ,, M3A 2V1 Canada | |
| Information | |
| School type | PublicHigh school |
| Motto | Perge et Perage "Take Action and Pursue our Goals with Enthusiasm" |
| Established | 1960 |
| School board | Toronto District School Board |
| Superintendent | Nadira Persaud |
| Area trustee | Farzana Rajwani |
| Principal | Rick Tarasuk[1] |
| Grades | 9-12 |
| Enrolment | 1,174 (as of August 2021)[2] |
| Language | English |
| Schedule type | Semestered |
| Area | North York, Ontario |
| Colours | Scarlet and Gold |
| Mascot | Panther |
| Website | https://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/victoriapark/ |
| Last updated: April 23, 2025 | |
Victoria Park Collegiate Institute (commonly known as Victoria Park C.I., Victoria Park, Vic Park, VP, and VPCI); formerly Victoria Park Secondary School, is acollegiate institute inToronto,Ontario, Canada. It is located south ofYork Mills Road and west ofVictoria Park Ave. in the district ofNorth York. It is the firstpublicly funded school in Ontario to host theInternational Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Authorized to offer the IB Diploma Programme since July 1987, the programme is taught in English. The school is open to male and female students. Some feeder schools includeMilne Valley Middle School and Donview Middle School. The student population of Victoria Park Collegiate Institute is diverse, with a component of English as Second Language students (over 30%).
Victoria Park Collegiate Institute was officially opened to students in 1960. Its name derives from the nearbyVictoria Park Avenue.[3][better source needed]
Approximately two decades after its founding, Victoria Park C.I. became the first public school withinOntario to offer theInternational Baccalaureate Program.
In the late 2000s, a fitness centre was opened, theBrian Maxwell Fitness Centre.[4]
Between 2016 and 2018, renovations were made to the school, which included remodelling the gym, improving the track field, revamping parking lots. New additions included a resource room, cell phone charging station, and repainted walls and doors.
On November 13, 2020, an 11-year boy died after falling through a skylight in the school[5]
On November 16, 2021, three students were stabbed, onefatally, during a fight outside the school.[6][7] The suspect was arrested and lateracquitted in 2024[8]
On May 12, 2022, the school was placed in alockdown after agrade 11 student was non-fatally shot in the south parking lot of the school[9]
For the year 2023/2024,
Victoria Park C.I. was the first public school in Ontario to offer theInternational Baccalaureate Diploma Program, beginning in 1987. Grade nine and ten students are admitted into a pre-IB program at Victoria Park where they are given the opportunity to gauge the IB curriculum. Individuals who wish to apply for the pre-IB program must complete a math test and then write a student application essay of 400-500 words. Afterwards, the applicant must attend an interview with the IB Coordinator in order to complete the application process.
IB graduates from Victoria Park C.I. consistently score in the top 10% worldwide, with many individuals in the top 5%. In the graduating class of 2013, 16 students out of 94 achieved a total score of 40 points or above, including one student who scored 44 points.
Sports offered at Victoria Park C.I. include:
Clubs offered include:
Competitive clubs include:
Victoria Park C.I., like all high schools in theTDSB, has a resourcefullibrary. The library offers over 20 workstations, two computer labs, independent study areas, printing services, and photocopying service. The library is also the home to over a thousand books of allgenres. The library occasionally holds fundraisers for theHospital for Sick Children and much more.
Some programs on the hundreds of computers (which run onWindows 7 andWindows 10) are Turing programming software,Microsoft Office 2010, and graphic editors such asAdobe Photoshop. TheAccelerated Reader software is offered, with which grade nine students are encouraged to read and are tested afterwards on the content of the novel they chose. Victoria Park CI has many carts of laptops which run onWindows 7 as well.
The White Pine high school reading program started in Victoria Park C.I. in the spring of 2003. Every year at the beginning of semester two, a meeting is held in the school library to gather students who are interested in participating in this reading program. All books nominated for White Pine are young adult fictions written by Canadian authors. The ten nominated books are introduced to the students who will have to read at least seven out of the ten selections to be eligible to vote for their favourite book.
A meeting takes place every three weeks in the library where students get an opportunity to discuss, with their peers as well as other teachers, about the books they have read. The voting for the favourite book takes place in mid-May at the school. After all the votes from across Ontario have been accounted for, teachers and students of Victoria Park C.I who have participated in the White Pine reading program are then invited to the ceremony where the winning author of the nominated books is announced.
43°45′21″N79°19′17″W / 43.755768°N 79.321445°W /43.755768; -79.321445