Delta Secondary School

King George V High School, the first high school in Delta, was located on the present site of the Ladner Community Center. The first two rooms of the school were built in 1912, with a third room added in 1916. Simeon Fisher in his book "The History of Delta" states that there was "opposition to building the school in Ladner on the grounds that there were not enough children to keep it going". The school closed in 1938 having had almost 500 students graduate during the life of the school. The building was not demolished right away but became a canteen known as the "Ladner Dug Out" to provide some diversion for the military who were training in Delta. After WW II, the Ladies Auxiliary of the Royal Canadian Legion used the building for meetings before it was replaced by a bowling alley and later the present community center.
In 1938, Delta Central School, originally built in 1926 and used as an elementary school (grade 1-8), was enlarged and updated for senior students while a new elementary school was built on the same plot of land, the site of DSS today. A new gym separated the two schools. The Weekly Optimist of December 15, 1938, reported that "the building and equipping of the new schools has taken many long sessions of deliberation by the school trustees and today the Junior-Senior High School, elementary school, gymnasium and manual training quarters are completely modern and fully equipped, supervised by a capable, enthusiastic teaching staff." 270 students were enrolled in the school at this time.