Education boom funds aid northern schools

By 
  • March 28, 2008

{mosimage}BRADFORD, Ont. - Catholic high school students in Bradford will get a little taste of Ontario’s $4-billion Good Places to Learn fund in the form of a $5.1-million renovation at Holy Trinity High School. And in another sign of the education boom outside Toronto, the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board has named its newest elementary school now under construction in Barrie’s south end.

The board will rebuild section of the Holy Trinity High School building which opened in 1994.

Holy Trinity was a product of full funding and started with 54 students and six staff in September 1985. The first classes were held in a Knights of Columbus hall. Within a couple of years Holy Trinity had moved to the third floor of a commercial building above a bank, and then to its present location where it operated mainly out of portable classrooms for years.

Today there are 615 students and 54 staff at Holy Trinity.

For the pupils at the new St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic School in south Barrie, they’ll have a proper school building from day one, right after Christmas 2008.

Students for the new school will be drawn from two other Barrie schools, Pope John Paul II and St. Michael the Archangel. Students, parents and staff from the two schools helped come up with the new school’s name.

Ab Falconi, principal of St. Michael the Archangel, will become the founding principal at St. Gabriel’s.

St. Gabriel’s will be the first new school Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board has opened since Sister Catherine Donnelly School in north Barrie opened in 2003.

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