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Community members interpreted the decision as discrimination affecting marginalized students, including new immigrants, refugees, and Indigenous learners. The article combines an urban, political-economic analysis with narrative policy history and quantitative demographic evidence to argue closure reflects interconnected challenges shaped by socioeconomic disparities and prior policy shortcomings.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-closure-of-rideau-high-school-a-case-study-in-the-political-economy-of-urban-education-in-ontario/596820/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-closure-of-rideau-high-school-a-case-study-in-the-political-economy-of-urban-education-in-ontario/596820.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Danger Angel","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why did the Ottawa school board vote to close Rideau High School?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The board argued that low enrolment prevented the school from offering a full range of course choices, making closure the only viable option.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How did community members interpret the closure decision?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Many community members viewed it as discrimination against the marginalized student population served by the school, including immigrants, refugees, and Indigenous students.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What research approach does the article use to analyze the decision?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It uses a case study in eastern Ottawa, combining a narrative history of board policies with a quantitative analysis of local demographic data, grounded in broader research on school closures.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},596820,1792190659,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},962090769052,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","The Closure of Rideau High School: A Case Study in the Political Economy of Urban Education in Ontario  \nJesse K. Butler, Ruth G. Kane, & Fiona R. Cooligan University of Ottawa  \nAbstract  \nIn 2017, school board trustees in Ottawa, Ontario, voted to close Rideau High School, an urban secondary school in a historically marginalized neighbourhood. The school board had argued that low enrolment at Rideau HS, and the resultant inability of the school to offer a full range of course choices, made closure the only viable option. To many people in the affected communities, however, the closure decision was seen as a form of discrimination against the school’s marginalized student population, which included many new immigrants, refugees, and Indigenous students. This article draws upon research from the US and the UK that emphasizes the spatial dimensions of urban education, along with the existing research on school closures in Ontario in order to explore this particular school closure decision from an urban, political, socioeconomic, and historical perspective. By focusing on a case study area in eastern Ottawa, this article incorporates both a narrative history of Ottawa school board policies and a quantitative analysis of local demographic data. The argument here is that the closure of Rideau HS should be understood in the context of a series of interconnected challenges faced by the school, including a marginalized student population, a negative reputation, and low student enrolment. In turn, these challenges should be understood in the context of socioeconomic disparities between neighbourhoods in the area and a history of ineffective policies at the school-board level, including relatively lax student transfer policies. These findings indicate the inadequacy of the narrow economic measures that Ontario school boards use to determine school closure decisions, and suggest that school boards should engage in more robust community engagement before closing marginalized urban schools. A proposal to establish an official “community hub” within the active high school, which was supported by the community but not by the school board, is examined as a concrete alternative to closure.  \nThe importance of the obvious has been overlooked by research. The rapid growth of bureaucracies recruited from highly specialized social sciences has brought the rapid growth of ecclesiasticism and the rapid decline of scepticism. Democracies are becoming people who cannot understand, run by people buttressed and protected by the ramparts of research.  \n-Harold A. Innis,“Political Economy in the Modern State”(1944, p. 334)  \nKeywords: school closure, Ottawa, Ontario, school boards, public policy, equity, urban education, residential concentration  \nIntroduction  \nOn March 7, 2017, school board trustees in Ottawa, Ontario, voted to close Rideau High School, an urban secondary school in a historically marginalized neighbourhood. The decision followed a long and  \nemotional public meeting of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), in which community members pleaded with the board to let them keep their school (Miller, 2017a) . The OCDSB (2009a; 2017a) has consistently argued that low enrolment at Rideau HS, and the resultant inability of the school to offer a full range of course choices, made closure the only viable option. However, to many people in the affected communities, the closure decision was seen as a form of discrimination against the school’s marginalized student population, which included many new immigrants, refugees, and Indigenous students (Miller, 2017a; 2017b) .  \nThis article is part of a more extensive study that seeks to understand the closure of Rideau HS through an analysis of the local historical, cultural, and political circumstances within which the OCDSB made their decision. While other articles are planned to explore different aspects of the closure decision, our goal here is to establish the local historical and socio","cbCaioundzc67aRr","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaioundzc67aRr","pdf",869098,23,"English","# Introduction\n## Case-study background and public decision process\n## Article purpose and research framing","[{\"question\":\"Why did the Ottawa school board vote to close Rideau High School?\",\"answer\":\"The board argued that low enrolment prevented the school from offering a full range of course choices, making closure the only viable option.\"},{\"question\":\"How did community members interpret the closure decision?\",\"answer\":\"Many community members viewed it as discrimination against the marginalized student population served by the school, including immigrants, refugees, and Indigenous students.\"},{\"question\":\"What research approach does the article use to analyze the decision?\",\"answer\":\"It uses a case study in eastern Ottawa, combining a narrative history of board policies with a quantitative analysis of local demographic data, grounded in broader research on school closures.\"}]","The Closure of Rideau High School - A Case Study in the Political Economy of Urban Education in Ontario | PDF",1792083798,58]