Weldon Park Academy

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Weldon Park Academy was a private school located at 451 Ridout Street North in London, Ontario that closed down in 2004. The school offered students a contiguous education from Montessori Casa up to OAC and was a member of the Conference of Independent Schools. The Lower School (grades one to five) and Middle School (grades six to eight), were among the best in the city and the staff genuinely cared for the school and its students. The school taught students at an advanced level; students regularly learned mathematics, science, and French a grade early. Weldon Park Academy attracted the children of many of London's elite, while many foreign students chose to study in Upper School.

Students were required to wear uniforms while at school. In Lower School, males wore grey pants, a dress shirt, and a red vest emblazoned with the school crest, while females wore a blouse and tunic. In Middle School, males added a school tie to their uniform, while females adopted a kilt with white shirt, red vest, and tie. In Upper School, males and females dropped the vest in favour of a blazer.

[edit] History

The school was founded in April 1995 by Frank Marchese, a former teacher at Matthews Hall, another private school in the same city, along with a number of his colleagues. The teachers hoped to be able to provide students with a comprehensive education that would allow them to study with the same peers from their childhood to graduation from high school; it was their goal that the school would one day be able to offer the International Baccalaureate diploma. The school was originally intended to be located at a library building at Weldon Park in Arva, Ontario, but on the day the school was to be first presented to the public, the founders were informed that zoning bylaws would not permit a school at that location.

The school was opened the next year in Spencer Lodge, a small building that was shared with the Scout Shop, but the school's original name of Weldon Park Academy was kept. With an initial enrollment of less than fifty students, the school was soon hailed as the fastest growing private school in Canada. The school was not without its problems: notable events that year included a fire in a portable and a flood that destroyed numerous books in the grade 3/4 classroom.

In 1997, the school was no longer small enough to fit in Spencer Lodge, and it moved to the previous Graphics Building at the University of Western Ontario. After another three years, the school had outgrown that building as well, and the school moved into its final home of the renovated Labbatt Building, also the site of the first private school in London.^[1] This was a gigantic six-storey building that could more than hold the approximately 400 enrolled students; it also featured state-of-the-art science laboratories. The school benefitted from its close proximity to the London Regional Art and Historical Museum, where students took art lessons, and Harris Park, used for sports activities. In 2000, the school finally became accredited with the International Baccalaureate Organization, achieving its longtime goal.

In 2001, it became clear that the school was suffering from financial troubles, and the board of governors terminated the contract of the founding Headmaster, Frank Marchese. This was seen as a major turning point in the school's history and brought about a general lack of confidence, as many of the students and teachers had known the Headmaster personally. The new Headmaster, Terry Clifford, was seen as cold to parents' and students' concerns, seeking mainly to rescue the school financially. At the end of the academic year, the school refused to renew the contracts of many of the teachers, while others left voluntarily. Enrollment plummeted as students lost teachers with whom they had grown up. The school went through a number of headmasters in the next couple of years, before closing in 2004 and transferring ownership of the building to Nancy Campbell Collegiate Institute, where a few of the teachers and students chose to continue.^[2]

Few, if any, of the founding students and teachers remain at the school; some of the students transferred to London Central Secondary School or other local schools, while others are now in university. Most of the teachers are teaching elsewhere or have retired.