The Re-entry Program in Scarborough began in November 1977 at Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute with one teacher and fifteen students.

[5] Meanwhile, the SBE moved classes as a method to quickly find a temporary location before the Tabor Park property being transferred to the MSSB on July 1, 1989.

[6] The original SCAS campus was reopened and became known as Jean Vanier Catholic Secondary School in September 1989.

The need for a new adult school led to a 'unique partnership' between the SBE and Centennial College, in 1992, to establish the new campus for SCAS, (originally the Scarborough Career Planning Centre) on 939 Progress Avenue that opened in September 1994.

SCAS also operated a satellite campus at the David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute for the Carpentry (Fix-It Shop) program until the Lawrence building was closed at the end of June 2019.

The school carries many modernist design features consisting of five stairwells, a circular cafeteria, a two floor library with two seminar rooms, wide guidance area, larger atrium, a theatre with more than 900 seats, 33 academic classrooms, two home economics rooms, one large lecture hall, four performing art rooms for music/dance/drama, two visual art rooms, five science labs, three gymnasia with the larger one that can be partitioned into two smaller gyms with SCAS occupying the larger gym, and large athletic field as well the track and football/soccer fields with an attached hill.

Historically, the school was attached by a day care centre, Not Your Average Daycare, and continues to do so today.