Student enrolment is down slightly at schools across School District 20 this year, according to SD 20 board chairperson Catherine Zaitsoff.
When comparing the start of the school year in 2019 to 2020, student enrolment dropped from 3915 to 3,800 students.
“The COVID-19 crisis is the most likely cause for why enrolment is down,” said Zaitsoff.
“Some families are either homeschooling or providing distance learning for their children and they were probably a little concerned about everything going on around the crisis.”
Stanley Humphries Secondary School in Castlegar and Rossland Summit School in Rossland are the only two schools in the district that have reported COVID-19 cases so far.
Enrolment is down evenly across most of the schools in the district.
SD 20 staff believe enrolment will return to normal levels once the crisis improves.
“We’re very confident that student enrolment will go back up again,” said Zaitsoff.
“We’re also really pleased that approximately 94 per cent of our students came back this year. That’s a very good number for us.”
SD 20 staff haven’t been able to provide Castlegar News enrollment data for each specific school in the district as of yet.
In comparison to other school districts, SD 10 saw an increase of more than 10 per cent in their student enrolment between September 2019 and September 2020.
