Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district has kept up recent trends with another year-over-year increase in enrolment.
B.C. school districts take an initial student count in late September, utilizing Baragar Systems to process data. Nanaimo-Ladysmith recorded 15,284 full-time students, compared with enrolment of 15,036 recorded last year at this time, representing an increase of 248 students, according to a staff report to the business committee last month. Numbers submitted one month after the start of the semester are considered a "snapshot" and help determine funding.
A number of schools made adjustments to account for class size and composition with new divisions created at Chase River, Gabriola, Forest Park, Cilaire, Rock City and Frank J. Ney elementary schools, according to an education committee report. Further, École North Oyster had a French immersion class removed and an English division added, staff stated.
At the business committee meeting, Mark Walsh, SD68 secretary-treasurer, said the school district was pleased to be "quite close" with estimates.
"A number of districts around the province are feeling an out-migration to Alberta … I believe Kelowna was in the news for having 363 less kids then they were projecting. They're still growing, but their projection came in significantly below," said Walsh. "If you staff 363 additional kids, that is a lot of dollars that the system needs to find in September."
In an e-mail, the district said Baragar, along with "historical student enrolment trends, kindergarten registrations and relevant stakeholder and local knowledge" are used for short-term projections. Licker Geospatial Consulting and regional and municipal data-based development patterns are used when the district is projecting medium- to long-range enrolment.
Jason Curteis, Baragar executive vice-president, told the News Bulletin that the company builds systems that allow it to access outside data sources without jeopardizing the privacy of individuals in those outside data sources and "so that [it] can access both provincial and federal data sources and bring them together for various different purposes."
"Once we've brought these different pieces of data together, local from the student system, viewed through a geographic context from the provincial side, from the federal side, what happens then is our analysts do a set of enrolment projections for the district, and they do a projection at the district level and that's the control projection. That's the one you have the most confidence in," Curteis said.
According to the B.C. Ministry of Education website, funding for public education is based on enrolment numbers, with most money being distributed "on a per [full-time equivalent student] basis." Money is also distributed in order to assist with students with disabilities, and in some cases, to help with challenges related to decreasing enrolment.
Current enrolment methodology relies on "historic enrolment patterns and estimated input drivers of student demographic, migration and grade-to-grade transition patterns to forecast the number of students enrolled in each school district," the ministry said.
Walsh told the committee the district always errs on the side of caution with projections.
"Back in January, we start the enrolment projection process, then we base our preliminary budget in April off of those preliminary enrolments and then we staff schools accordingly," he said. "In the event that we miss, we over-staff a school, we're in pretty tough straits, so typically we are conservative in nature in our enrolment."
