The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division and the South East Cornerstone Public School Division have both seen an increase in their official enrolment numbers.
The figures are tabulated on Sept. 30 of each year. Holy Family is at 1,392 students as of Sept. 30, up nine students from the projections that were submitted last December, and 22 students from the 1,370 they had on Sept. 30, 2018.
Holy Family has two kindergarten to Grade 8 schools in Estevan. Sacred Heart School/École SacréCoeur was sitting at 376 students as of Sept. 30, up from 367 the year before. St. Mary’s School had 294 students, compared to 287 a year earlier.
“We pretty well are status quo in our numbers,” said Keith.
Holy Family also has schools in Weyburn, Radville and Wilcox.
Keith said she would always like the numbers to be higher, but when compared with year over year totals, they’re satisfied with the student base. The numbers won’t cause any issues for the division as far as staffing at the schools.
“As the year goes on, we get some extra students, and we always accommodate our special needs students,” said Keith.
The division always looks at enrolments per grade, and the needs can force adjustments to staffing, but as far as the staff numbers are concerned, Keith said the schools are happy with what they have.
As for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division, they have 8,371 students as of Sept. 30, which is 63 higher than the 8,308 they expected, and 89 higher than the 8,282 they had a year earlier.
“Across the system, we have many that came in awfully close to what they had projected, up and down, and then of course, as always, there is always some variation,” said director of education with SECPSD Lynn Little.
The two largest schools in the division had larger growth than expected. The Estevan Comprehensive School came in at 756, 31 higher than projected, while the Weyburn Comprehensive School was 71 more than projected.
“There is some movement from outside the system, but there is some movement from internally. Primarily it came from outside of the system, as folks moved into the area,” said Little.
Estevan Comprehensive School is a Grade 9 to 12 school, while Weyburn’s is a Grade 7-12 school.
As for Cornerstone’s four kindergarten to Grade 8 schools in Estevan, Hillcrest School had 126, which is seven more than the 119 projected; Pleasantdale School is 201, down four from projections; Spruce Ridge is 403, which is up nine from projections, and Westview is 176, which is down two.
As for schools in close proximity to Estevan, Lampman School was at 192 students, which is exactly what was projected; Macoun School is 65 students, up one from projections; Bienfait Weldon School is 145, which down one from projections; and Midale Central School is at 153.
Little noted the division had more students than anticipated at Arcola School, which has 259 students, 14 more than projected.
Little said the division is pretty happy with the numbers, and when they wind up with more than anticipated, that’s a positive.
“We study where the students come into a school and what grade levels they fall into, and what those sizes were, and if there’s additional pressures. If there are additional pressures in a grade level or a course, we make some changes.”
An additional 2.4-equivalent staff members have been added to the instructional base at the Weyburn Comprehensive School. Most of the increase in Weyburn is for Grades 10-12, which left Cornerstone with some very large classes, so extra staff were added for those grades.
As for ECS, the division is in the process of studying the higher than expected enrolments, but they believe the increase is fairly evenly spread out over the four grades.
“It hasn’t been reported to us that there are hot spots, per say,” said Little.
