Lower student enrolment will have financial implication for Chinook School Division

Fewer students have enrolled in Chinook School Division for the 2018-19 school year, which will have have an impact on the organization's budget allocation from the Ministry of Education.

Director of Education Kyle McIntyre announced the official enrolment figures for the new school year at a regular meeting of the Chinook School Division's board of education, Oct. 9.

“That has some budget implications for us, because part of our funding formula is based on student enrolment,” he said after the meeting. “So although we wouldn't have a significant decrease in students overall, and we have some schools that are up, some schools that are down in terms of enrolment, it does impact our overall bottom line.”

The enrolment figures reflect the number of students on Sept. 30. There are 5,948 students in the school division, of which 5,335 are in public schools, 483 are Hutterite colony students, and 130 are home schoolers.

Overall student numbers are down 21 in comparison to last year. There are 17 fewer students in public schools and colony student numbers are down by 10, but there are six more home schooling students. There will be no adjustment to teaching staff at any schools due to the lower enrolment.

“We have worked very hard the last two years to be as efficient as we can be as an organization,” he said. “So now we're at a place where we require sufficient funds to operate our system. You probably heard in some reports today that every dollar matters, because we want to keep resources in the classroom. So although that's not a huge number of students in terms of the downside, we would like to see that increase, because if we have more students that means we get more funding. The funding dollars typically follow the population.”

Various factors are part of the Ministry of Education's overall funding formula for school divisions, but typically it amounts to about $12,000 to $14,000 per student.

“Those funds aren't directly invested in every single student,” he explained. “It pays for our transportation, it pays for teacher salaries, it pays for maintenance of buildings, it pays for learning resources. That's just a methodology to generate dollars to fund school divisions.”

The funding formula was reviewed about two years ago, but McIntyre feels it places the Chinook School Division, which is a large rural school division, at a disadvantage.

“Right now we have 44 schools that are under 100 students and so those schools are not fully utilized in terms of occupancy or space,” he said. “One of the ways that we're funded, in addition to student numbers, is what percentage of a school is utilized. We have lots of buildings that were probably built for double or triple the student population that's in them right now. We are penalized in terms of utilization for those schools and we're funded accordingly.”

The rural nature of the Chinook School Division means that schools still have to operate in those smaller communities.

“A number of our costs are fixed costs,” he said. “We cannot do anything about electricity or gas or water or lighting or anything like that. Our costs are the same, whether we have 400 kids in those buildings or whether we have 100 kids. So in the present funding formula we are penalized for that.”

Schools with the most significant increase in enrolment are Swift Current Comprehensive High School (40), Leader (14), Vanguard (13), École Centennial School (11), and Burstall (8).

The most significant decreases in student enrolment occurred at O.M. Irwin School (41), Wymark (23), Maple Creek Composite School (15), and Frontier (14).

The almost similar change in student enrolment at Swift Current Comprehensive High School and O.M. Irwin School is due to a transfer of students from Grade 8.

“We had a cohort at Irwin last year of Grade 8 students that was one of our biggest Grade 8 cohorts in the division,” he said. “So those kids have now moved from Irwin into the Comp. So that's the reason why and really those two are a bit of a wash.”

The lower student numbers will not make it easier for Chinook School Division to deal with budget constraints, but there will be no consolidation of school facilities.

“We're not looking at closing any schools, we're not looking at consolidating any schools,” McIntyre said.

“We have 43,000 square kilometres in our division. Every single community that has a school, needs a school. If you were to consolidate a school, you would increase your transportation costs, you would increase your time on a bus, which is not good for kids. So our position is that if you have a building in a particular community, then it needs to be funded adequately to operate it.”