| St. Patrick Catholic Secondary School | |
| Amor Christi nos impellit The Love of Christ Impels Us |
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| Address | |
| 49 Felstead Avenue Toronto, Ontario, M4J 1G3, Canada |
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| Information | |
| School board | Toronto Catholic District School Board |
| Superintendent | Michael McMorrow |
| Area trustee | Nancy Crawford |
| Principal | John Shanahan |
| School type | Catholic High school |
| Grades | 9 to 12 |
| Language | English |
| Team name | The Patriots |
| Colours | Red, Black and White |
| Enrolment | 484 (SY 2010-11) |
| Homepage | http://www.tcdsb.org/stpatrick/ |
St. Patrick Catholic Secondary School (also The Centre for Arts, Media, and Technology @ St. Patrick Catholic Secondary School) is a Roman Catholic high school located in Toronto, Ontario and operated by the Toronto Catholic District School Board. Also known as SPCSS, St. Pats, or just Pats, it is dedicated to Saint Patrick of Ireland. One of Toronto's oldest schools, St. Patrick's grew out of an elementary school founded in 1852; the secondary school opened in 1986 on D'Arcy Street. In 1989 St. Patrick moved from downtown Toronto into a former public school in Toronto's east end.
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One of Toronto's oldest catholic schools, St. Patrick was founded as an elementary school on D'Arcy Street in downtown Toronto in 1852 during the introduction of publicly funded education in Canada. At first a primarily Irish school, St. Patrick (patron of Ireland) and St. Marguerite Bourgeoys (a French Canadian) were chosen as the patrons.
In 1986 with the extension of public funding of catholic education to secondary schools, St. Patrick became a secondary school and began to search for a new site. In 1989, during a period of reorganisation by the Toronto Public School Board, Lakeview Public Secondary School, in a new building on the site of a former quarry at 49 Felstead Ave. in Toronto's east end, was closed due to low enrolement and the property was turned over to the Metropolitan Separate School Board (now the Toronto Catholic District School Board) to be the new site for St. Patrick. The school has a large feeder area, serving Catholics from almost all of the former City of Toronto's east end.
The school has seen drastic changes in enrolement over the years as schools in Toronto have suffered from the movement of many families to the suburbs. During the 1990s, after a long period of immigration to Toronto of many Catholic families, St. Patrick's had up to 1,500 students housed in the five storey school building. The student population began to dwindle in the 2000s and now stands at only 566 students. The ethnic make-up of the student population has also changed; today it is very diverse with a large number of Hispanic, White, Filipino and Black students including many from immigrant families.
During the years St. Patrick has undergone extensive renovations with the purchase of new up-to-date facilities for theatre and visual arts, physical education and construction technology.
In June 2010, St. Patrick was chosen to be a grade 9-12 Arts, Media and Technologies Centre by TCDSB.[1] This program will start in the 2011-2012 school year. However, the arts portion is an audition-only basis, while the media/technology having no auditions.