Notre Dame High School (Ottawa)

Notre Dame High School is a Catholic high school in Ottawa's west operated by the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board. The school is one of the first in the area to use a uniform and one of the first in the board to ban the use of cell phones and MP3 players on the campus.

The school is mainly two storeys throughout, except for the northeast corner where it features a basement in which the classrooms are almost exclusively for mathematics. It has an auditorium which also serves as the West-End Family Cinema on selected evenings. It used to feature a single gymnasium in the centre of the school, but an extra one was built and opened in 2002-2003. Sports teams play under the moniker/nickname "Notre Dame Eagles" (formerly the Notre Dame Silver Eagles). The present site at 710 Broadview was once the site of Highland Park Technical School. Notre Dame High School moved into the 710 Broadview site during the mid–90's, from their old site on the north west corner of the Holland Ave–Queensway intersection. That site is now Fisher Park Public School

The high school operates on a standard semestered system for grades 9-12, but the grade 7 and 8 component is, as of 2006/07 school year, on a 6–period, 5–day cycle with phys-ed every day.

History

Initially, Notre Dame was located on Heron Road and was an all girl's school. In 1968 St Pat's School for boys moved to the campus and shared the chapel, theater and other facilities with Notre Dame. In 1971, a few classes became blended from the 2 schools. In 1972, the senior grades from both schools were eliminated due to financial constraints, as there was not government funding for Catholic high schools in Ontario. In 1973, the nuns who ran Notre Dame were forced to close the doors. Students from Notre Dame had to attend public schools or go to St. Joes or St. Pius. A "new" Notre Dame was once again created after full funding for Ontario catholic schools was announced and the former St. Joseph and St. Raymond high schools (both grade 7-10) were merged into one school serving grade 9-OAC students. The school was relocated from its previous location on Holland Avenue in 1994. It is a very multicultural school, and housed Grades 9 to OAC until the 2002-2003 school year when Grades 7 and 8 were added from St. Josephs Middle School. The enrollment for the 2008-09 school year is 980 students.

Uniform

The school has a uniform, consisting of either unisex pants, unisex shorts, unisex kapris, white and gray unisex polo shirts, white and gray unisex long sleeved polo shirt, and for girls a kilt, a wrap-around skirt, a navy skirt and a fitted blouse. There is also a gym shirt which is mandatory when participating in phys-ed. The uniforms are manufactured by Top Marks co. for the school, while several other companies provide accessories with the Notre Dame logo, some of which can be used as uniform.

==Activities

Senior high school students are offered overseas trips each year usually surrounding the battles of the Second World War; more recently students have visited Vimy Ridge and Ortona with other Canadian high schools. Students also participate in the regional Cappies competition, and have worked with Nepean High School to gather used snow suits for the Broadview Mission.

Transportation

Busing is provided for grade 7 and 8 students, and from grades 9 to 12 a free OC Transpo bus pass is given if the student lives more than 3 km away from the school. Within 3 km students must arrange their own transportation.