Lower priority for siblings in new rules for school enrolment

The Greater Victoria school board has voted 6-3 to approve a new set of student enrolment priorities.

Top priority students will be those reenrolling at a school, followed by siblings in a school-catchment area, new catchmentarea children, non-catchment-area siblings and non-school-district children. Many parents were leery of the change, feeling it doesn’t give enough consideration to allowing siblings to follow each other through the same schools.

The former rules also had re-enrolling students in the first spot, followed by their siblings and then by catchment-area students.

Some trustees said they had a difficult time deciding whether to approve the change.

“I’ve been struggling, going back-andforth,” said trustee Peg Orcherton.

Parent Joyce Preston spoke in favour of emphasizing catchment children being able to attend their neighbourhood schools. She said communities are strengthened by what goes on inside a neighbourhood school.

School board chairwoman Edith LoringKuhanga said she had read many emotional emails from parents. A number of parents have said they are afraid of having to have children in more than one school.

She said any notion of putting off the decision would be wrong.

“If we don’t do it now we’re going to have to do it in the future.”

The change will go into effect in the 2018-19 school year.

Looming concerns about classroom space have led to study of the enrolment issue for the past 10 months by a district committee, including four parents and two students. The committee will be looking at the possibility of re-opening closed schools and revising school-catchment boundaries.

Seven elementary schools were closed from 2003 to 2007 during a time of enrolment decline.

Space worries stem in part from enrolment projections indicating the number of students in the district will increase to 21,000 from 19,000 over the next decade. Adding to that is the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada decision last year, restoring B.C. teachers’ 2002 contract language, is leading to smaller class sizes and a subsequent need for more classrooms.

One response by the district is a plan to install 12 more portables at various schools, which the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association has called a “costly stopgap measure.”

Audrey Smith, president of the Victoria Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils and one of the parents on the committee, said there have been some tough times for the group. “We were tossing and turning because we can’t meet everybody’s wishes.”

Smith said school have fixed capacities. “We want to keep families together, but ideally we keep families together in their neighbourhood schools.”

Superintendent Piet Langstraat has said the district received plenty of feedback about the issue, including a survey responded to by about 3,400 parents and 418 students.

He said the result was that 61 per cent of respondents favoured catchment-area children over siblings, but the survey has drawn criticism for such things as the scope of questions and the amount of publicity it received.