The Rocky View Schools (RVS) Board of Trustees was presented with a preliminary enrolment report for the new school year, on Sept. 8.
From data collected during the first week of school, RVS Superintendent of Schools Greg Luterbach estimated the school division would have over a 4 per cent growth increase from last year.
“Enrolment numbers are important numbers, they tell us how many students we are educating across the system,” Luterbach said. “These are the numbers of students that we have registered. These are our kids, and the kids that we’re teaching across the system.”
Enrolment numbers are changing but will be finalized by the end of September.
At the end of September last year, RVS had 26,662 students, almost 1,300 more students than September 2020.
“It was a very unique year, it was the first time in history that RVS declined like pretty much every school division in the province as families made choices around keeping students at home during that time,” Luterbach said.
In January, RVS submitted the projected enrolment to the provincial government, by collecting data on community growth, grade-to-grade growth, historical trends, census, and birthrate data.
“That projection is a little bit of art and a little bit of science,” Luterbach said.
With the data collected, RVS estimated that enrolment would be about 27,563 students, an increase of 941 from last year.
“What’s driving the growth, no surprise to trustees, its community growth. We’re seeing new neighbourhoods popping up in most of our communities, those neighbourhoods have a combination of homes, and many of those homes have school-aged kids,” Luterbach said. “We’re seeing overall general community growth, and as a result, we’re seeing population growth.”
As of Sept. 6, RVS pre-school programs had 1,827 students, a decrease from 1,974 that were enrolled last year.
“This is the hardest group because the data fluctuates a fair bit,” Luterbach said.
RVS projected that grade one would have 2,180 students, and there are currently 2,161.
Grades 6 and 7 have over 2,000 students, an increase more than RVS had previously projected.
“Overall, we thought we would have 27, 563 students, right now we have 27, 752,” Luterbach said. “Right now, we’re 100 per cent confident that we’re going to meet projection, we’re probably going to be over projection. When all is said and done, we’ll probably be over 1,000 kids this year.”
RVS typically grows between 700 and 1,000 students per year, and Luterbach is predicting the school division will grow more.
“We will be at least double the provincial average. We’re growing fast and we’re growing faster than most of our neighbours around the province,” Luterbach said.
“We can see it in our communities, we can see in when we drive around, the growth, and the housing popping up, and the kids coming,” RVS Ward 6 Trustee and Board Chair, Fiona Gilbert said. “You can see it right across the system.”
RVS is continuing to monitor the enrolment numbers and is in contact with schools that are significantly over the projection numbers, offering support and resources.
“Some schools are higher than we thought, some schools are bang on, and a couple of schools are less than we thought,” Luterbach said. “Right now, it’s too early to get into a level of detail for enrolment numbers.”
