Etobicoke high school keeps name

Kipling Collegiate Institute students vote to keep school’s identity

In a decision some alumni are calling “historic,” Kipling Collegiate Institute will be keeping its name.

That news was delivered to students and parents of the central Etobicoke high school via an email from the Toronto District School Board superintendent of education Angela Nardi-Addesa on Oct. 27, following a student vote two days before.

“The results were decisive. By a 3-to-1 margin, students voted ‘No’ to changing the name of the school,” Nardi-Addesa wrote, noting that more than 80 per cent of students cast a ballot during the schoolwide vote. Jeff Nova, one of many school alumni who had petitioned the board to retain the school’s name, said he and his fellow Kipling graduates “fully support” the current students’ wishes to not change the name.

“We appreciate their tremendous effort and courage in making this happen. They should be quite proud of themselves.

“This was a historic decision,” he said.

“I think I can speak on behalf of past KCI Wildkats in saying we feel our school and our future is very well looked after.”

The search for a new name for Kipling Collegiate was first initiated last year as part of a local Pupil Accommodation Review Committee and subsequent decision that Kipling Collegiate would amalgamate with Scarlett Heights Entrepreneurial Academy for this school year.

School board officials believed that decision necessitated a name change.

After soliciting new name suggestions from the school community, a committee made up of student representatives, staff members and the principals of each school — as well as alumni, then-trustee Chris Glover and Nardi-Addesa — narrowed a field of 396 possible submissions down to three finalists.

Then last spring, the school communities of both Kipling Collegiate and Scarlett Heights — as well as Grade 8 students from their feeder schools — held a vote to choose one of the three potential new names: Leonard Braithwaite, Adrienne Clarkson or Michaëlle Jean.

When the results of that vote — during which 60 per cent of eligible staff and students cast a ballot — failed to reveal a clear winner, the school board temporarily suspended the process until this fall. A new, studentled committee was set up to spearhead the initiative.