Alpha II was founded in 2007 by a dedicated group of ALPHA Alternative Junior School parents and the Toronto District School Board. The first home of Alpha II was in Kent Senior Public School, just to the southeast of Bloor Collegiate Institute. We were there for five years, offering grades 7 and 8 at first and eventually transitioning into the 7-12 secondary school it is today. We moved to Bloor Collegiate in 2012, and moved again in 2021 to our current temporary location within Central Tech. We will be moving to our new space at Bloor and Dufferin in September 2025 (For updates on the new building, please see our Relocation to CTS information).

FUN FACTS ABOUT ALPHA II

• ALPHA is an acronym for A Lot of People Hoping for an Alternative. 

• ALPHA Alternative Junior School (our sibling school) is Toronto’s original democratic school, and the oldest elementary alternative public school in Toronto - operating since 1972!

• Our approach to education is modeled after the democratic free-schooling philosophy popularized during the 1960s by A. S. Neil in his book Summerhill.  This model was later redefined as unschooling—learning and teaching that does not resemble school learning and teaching—by John Holt in the 1970s. 

• We are the only publicly funded free school in the world.

• Carol Nash, one of the school's founders, was awarded the 2020 Leaders & Legends Innovation Award and the 2021 Alumni of Influence Award from the University of Toronto. Her two children went to Alpha II from grades 7-12 and then continued on to four-year post-secondary education degrees.