Although the decrease was mitigated by an additional 19 Kindergarten kids, Westlock Elementary School and R.F. Staples School have experienced a combined decrease of 42 students to start the school year.
Meanwhile, Busby School increased by 11, Eleanor Hall School remained static and Pembina North Community School saw its numbers drop by eight.
Pembina Hills Public Schools secretary-treasurer Tracy Meunier presented the Sept. 30, 2018 enrolment counts for individual schools to trustees during their Oct. 24 meeting in Barrhead.
She said all schools take a look at their projected enrolments in January, which used to develop the allocation formula that the division uses to distribute funding.
The projections are updated in April when individual schools update their budgets, Meunier indicated.
“Then they hold their breath until the first few days of school, at which time we do a preliminary look to see if there’s anything that needs to be flagged,” she said.
As of Sept. 30 Pembina Hills experienced a net decrease of two students — including Kindergarten — from the previous year, with the total enrolment across 11 community schools, two Hutterite colony schools and two outreach schools coming in at 3,816.
Excluding Kindergarten, Pembina Hills is down 40 from the previous year, a decrease of approximately 1.16 per cent.
“What is happening is very predictable. It has been happening for a good number of years,” she said.
Meunier noted that number for Kindergarten includes 136 ECS (Early Childhood Services) students who are three to four years old and enrolled in preschool programs. Those children are identified as having developmental delays and the division receives funding for those children.
“Those are not the actual number of pre-school students, because you have your typically developing children as well. Those are in a mixture of community-based programs and Pembina Hills-run programs,” she said.
“Don’t be thinking that you’ll have 397 students in Grade 1 next year. That will not happen.”
Meunier also noted these numbers do not include students enrolled at Vista Virtual School, which takes in students via continuous enrolment in a manner similar to the Alberta Distance Learning Centre.
“(Continuous enrolment) means we don’t know what the enrolment count is until the year is done, because we don’t know when those students are going to register,” she said.
That said, Vista Virtual School served 10,474 students across Alberta in the 2017-2018 school year — of that number, only 496 were full-time students and the rest were part-time.
Westlock decrease
Going into individual numbers, Westlock Elementary School saw its enrolment decrease from 504 to 485 this year.
R.F. Staples also saw a decrease of 23 students — the school’s total enrolment now stands at 701, with junior high numbers (269 students) at their lowest point in 13 years.
Outside of Westlock, the picture is less grim. Busby’s enrolment increased to 110 as of the start of the year, including a ECS (Early Childhood Services) enrolment increase of four.
Eleanor Hall gained four ECS students but lost four others in other grades, so their enrolment remains at 263.
PNCS lost 11 ECS students from the previous year, but managed to gain three Grade 1-9 students to stand at 220.
The Pibroch Colony School gained one student and the Westlock Outreach School went up by four.
Looking across the division, the only other major decrease seen this year was at Barrhead Elementary School, which lost a net 23 students. ECS numbers went up by 31 students, but Grade 1-6 enrolment dropped by 54.
However, Barrhead Composite High School saw an increase of 42 students, while Swan Hills Schools gained a total of eight Kindergarten students and six Grade 1-12 students.
That equates to an 11 per cent increase in enrolment at Busby, a seven per cent increase at Swan Hills and a six per cent increase at Barrhead Composite.
