After seeing student enrolment decreasing for a number of years, Nanaimo school district could be trending up again.
District enrolment was 16,252 full-time equivalent students in 2000-01 and declined every year until 2015-16 when it increased to 13,374 from 13,155, according to the B.C. Ministry of Education.
Final 2016-17 numbers are forthcoming, but 13,416 FTE students were forecast, an increase over 13,374 in 2015-16. Based on numbers from last June, the district is again projecting an increase with an estimate of about 13,571 for 2017-18.
The district will submit a preliminary count to the Ministry of Education by the end of September, and at the business committee meeting last Wednesday, John Blain, school district superintendent, elaborated on the numbers.
“We’re seeing an increase in elementary by about 100 students or more,” said Blain. “We overall, conservatively again … not including 150 of the original projection, we are looking at probably around another 175 FTE past the projections. So that would be an increase in fundings from our original budget as we walk through.”
Blain said secondary enrolment is coming in higher than the district was thinking.
“Because we haven’t cleaned out the system yet for the no-shows and things like that, secondary schools, we’re just working on that,” said Blain. “So a number that we’ve been using conservatively when we’re doing some of this forecasting and planning where 10 FTE [teachers] worth of funding is going to come from, we’ve been using the number 175 students.”
Blain said the district is healthy with its enrolment.
“We’re looking at another incline, we’re looking at, I can safely say, that we will not be in a decline from our projections, which is good … we’re still working through a lot of the next steps and we’ll have everybody in schools,” said Blain.
