With the exception of the Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS), student enrolments in Estevan's public schools will remain pretty well static compared with last year.
Lynn Little, director of education for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division, said this past week there was an expectation of a very modest increase in total student population that is housed in 39 school facilities scattered throughout southeast Saskatchewan. This follows a trend of small increases within the division for the past two academic years.
At the end of the school year in June of this year, there were 8,228 students attending classes in Cornerstone schools. In this new academic year, that number should or could be around 8,238, which pretty well translates into maintaining a status quo situation.
One notable exception to the otherwise stabilized registration numbers is found at ECS where 861 students answered the call for the first few days of classes, an increase of 43 compared with the June enrollment and well ahead of the projected number.
"A significant portion of growth at ECS would be newcomers to the province, a few are interprovincial (transfers), as well we have several returning students and those who are upgrading," said Little.
Besides ECS, Macoun School, a kindergarten to Grade 6 facility is experiencing a jump of eight registered students, giving that community's educational centre a total enrolment of 60 this year, a significant hike for a school of that size. No increase had been projected for Macoun School heading into the new school year.
Spruce Ridge School in Estevan is also witnessing an increase of eight, moving from 421 students at the close of operations last June to 429 on opening day last week. Officials had predicted a slight hike in numbers at Spruce Ridge.
Other schools in Estevan and the immediate area are showing stable numbers or slight declines in population such as Hillcrest School where there are 163 students to start the new school year whereas there had been 175 at the close of the last school year. The decline of a dozen or more was not anticipated by those who were running the numbers on the projection front.
Little said an enrolment forecasting tool known as Baragar, is used to project enrolments. Officials also use the always very helpful local knowledge about civic growth or decline and current student numbers to arrive at their forecast numbers.
Pleasantdale School, another Estevan elementary public school, will see only a slight dip in enrolment, moving from 226 to 224 students, whereas officials had been predicting a slight increase in registration due to a rapidly growing nearby residential subdivision.
Westview School, another Estevan based kindergarten to Grade 8 facility, is also witnessing a small decline, going from 196 to 189 whereas the prediction was for a small increase.
In Lampman, the kindergarten to Grade 12 school is seeing a pretty-well stabilized enrolment figure with 225 students registered there compared with the 226 registered last year. Again, the prognosticators had predicted a slight increase.
In Midale Central School, another kindergarten to Grade 12 configuration, there is a drop of 10 from the student population to 149, just about what the projection called for.
Weldon School in Bienfait, a kindergarten to Grade 8 school, sees 122 students enrolled this year, a drop of 11 from last year. The projection was for a slight decrease for this school as well.
Estevan and area schools have also welcomed 14 new teachers into the fold as reported by the division's head office.
Three of the newcomers have been added to the ECS staff. The new faces there are Kaila Jutras, Andrew LaPrairie and Breanne Swarbrick.
Hillcrest School is welcoming newcomer Alissa Klassen, who is actually transferring from another Cornerstone School, while Pleasantdale School has three newcomers, Ryan Jutras, Tannis Scharnatta and Kathleen Stobbs.
There are no new additions to the Spruce Ridge teachers staff while Westview has two additions to their staff; Stacey Chalmers and Kayla Hanson.
Weldon School has added Shannon Brown to their list of educators while Macoun School welcomes Preston Dumaine. Finally, at Midale Central, the newcomers are Cathy Harvey who is the school's new principal and she will be joined by newcomers Rebecca Aspinall and Jessica McNabb.
