School jurisdictions experience a drop in student enrolment

That’s a decrease of 4 percent from the 2019-2020 school year.

Davidson says there’s a considerable amount of students who just didn’t come at all, or moved to home education and are not registered anywhere.

Some families have also chosen to register their child later, rather than having them enter kindergarten this year as a COVID precaution.

Davidson notes students who are registered for school via the Hub online learning are counted in the enrolment total. About 470 students are registered in the Hub.

Funding wise, he says the odd shift in enrolment may potentially create challenges down the road.

“The government has moved to a weighted moving average where your funding is based on prior year’s enrolment and registration of the current year and the year even before that. Boards from across the province have asked the minister to consider some sort of funding remedy, given the fact that students have just sort of not materialized or they’re moving to a way of doing school where we can’t track where they’ve gone.”

Davidson adds, students have also registered late, “Something we’ve noticed is that we’ve received dozens of students, well over 30, that have registered across the system after September 30. So after that funding deadline.”

He says students are starting to show up, the division serves them, but at this point, there’s no funding for that service.

Divisions will really feel the funding pinch this time next year and the year after.

Davidson adds that some school jurisdictions have lost 8-10 percent of students.

“If the province doesn’t make a sort of remedy available, students might show up next year, but we’ve lost the funding because of the year prior, which would cause increases in class sizes and more difficulty in spreading services,” he said.

Meantime, Prairie Rose School Division (PRSD) released its enrolment numbers at the beginning of October.

Meeting highlights indicate, “Due to COVID-19, it was challenging to get a clear understanding of the full impact on the division. Prior to the pandemic, the division was anticipating an enrolment increase of 66 students due to the growth of the CSSHL hockey programs at Eagle Butte High School. However, based on September 30 counts, that number has come in 80.7 below projections.”

PRSD says it was noted that 14.2 of those students are enrolled in a new Prairie Rose homeschooling program. In total, 3,088.5 students are enrolled in Prairie Rose schools with 107 students choosing the at-home learning from home option. At-home learning students may choose to come back into their regular school at any time during the school year.

Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education says their current enrolment is 2622 students. That number has not fluctuated from last year.

by Chantal Wagner

School jurisdictions experience a drop in student enrolment

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