School District 72 will be looking at redrawing its catchment areas – the lines drawn that determine which neighbourhoods’ kids attend which schools. Unfortunately, it can’t enforce them even after it does.
“Our elementary school population is not equally distributed within the district at present,” reads the recommendation that was recently accepted by the board under its 10-year Facility Plan. “The district needs to examine potential population growth and shifts within the greater Campbell River area.”
It’s a tricky situation, according to Superintendent Tom Longridge, for many reasons.
One of these complications is that not all schools offer the same programs – French Immersion is the most obvious example of this – and parents choosing to have their kids go to schools outside their catchment area so they can take these programs complicate the drawing of those lines.
“You have to look at what school communities those students are being drawn from,” he said, because if there are bunches of kids from one catchment area that are choosing to attend schools from outside that catchment, it obviously lowers the population of school-aged children for the school in that area, meaning there may not be enough kids in the area left to have the school at an acceptable capacity.
“We have noticed, in regard to some particular programs of choice, that (many students) come from certain areas of town (to take them), and the growth distributions of those areas of town have an effect on that,” said Longridge. “Requests for locations in regards to schools of choice also have an effect.”
For example, some families move to another area of town, but would like their child to remain in the same school they’ve been attending.
“Is there a real risk that we’re going to have to enforce catchment lines?” asked Trustee Ted Foster.
Longridge responded to the question by saying that “it does become an issue,” at times when too many students want to go to schools outside their catchment area.
“A few years ago it was Pinecrest that had some challenges due to over subscriptions – more students were requesting to go there (than it could hold).”
But they have that right, Longridge said.
He said the difficulty of enforcing catchment lines is “the choice legislation that went through were parents may request any school they wish, attend any school they wish, with, of course, the understanding that it has to have the room and capacity to provide an appropriate educational program. Those are the parameters we work under,” Longridge said.
So if there’s room in a school, any parent in the district can decide to send their child there.
The redrawing of the catchment areas will take place during Phase Two of the 10-year Facility Plan, which begins next September.
The one thing Longridge is certain of is that they aren’t interested in capping enrolment in programs of choice like French Immersion, because the district recognizes the value of those programs to the education of the children in the region.
“One of the assumptions made when preparing the report was the understanding from the board that they were not interested in capping access to programs of choice,” he told the board.
