Student enrolment higher than projected

"IT'S BETTER THAN WE THOUGHT"

VERNON – Enrolment is still down, but not as much as everyone thought.

Superintendent Joe Rogers says there are about 100 more students enrolled in School District 22 than were expected.

"We'll have to wait until the end of the month for more accurate numbers, but it looks like we're up from what was projected," Rogers says. "It's good news, though we're still down overall."

The school district was expecting to lose 176 students this year, but it looks like it will be closer to only 76. Rogers says enrolment is expected to continue to level out over the next few years, and begin to rise around 2018. Projections are based on census data and municipal information which together provide a rough picture of how many families and children there will be in the region.

"Over the next four years the school district is expected to decline about 200 students," Rogers says. "We were losing 200 a year not long ago, so it's slowing down."

Rogers says around 635 in twelfth grade will graduate this year, but only 562 students will enter kindergarten.

"Once those numbers are the same, we'll start to stabilize," he says.

With government funding based on a per student basis, every body counts.

"We're funded $7,000 per child. When we lose 100 kids we lose $700,000," Rogers says. "We're very tight."

To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infotelnews.ca, call (250)309-5230 or tweet @charhelston.

This story was edited at 9:30 a.m. September 13 to clarify that the school district has 100 more students than projected, not 80.