BARRHEAD - Stable was the word Pembina Hills School Division secretary-treasurer Heather Nanninga used to describe the division's school enrolment numbers during the Oct. 25 trustee meeting.
The province takes the division's enrolment numbers every year in late September, Nanninga said adding the number is significant for many reasons, the main one being the criteria the province uses to base most of the funding they give school divisions, specifically the previous three years.
"We are pretty stable. Enrolment in our community schools is slightly down, whereas [Virtual Vista School] is a little bit up," she said. "We like stable enrolments because it helps us plan, be nimble, and adapt to what we need to do."
Overall, exempting Vista Virtual School (VVS) enrolment numbers, the number of students attending Pembina Hills dropped slightly by 92, going from 3,735 in 2022/23 to 3,643.
VVS is an online public education distance Grade 1 to 12 school with students from all over the globe.
It continues a downward trend Pembina Hills has been seeing for the last 10 years, with the exemption of a blip in 2021/22, which saw an increase coming back from lower in-person enrolment after the pandemic.
Some schools Nanninga specifically singled out were Eleanor Hall School, a K to Grade 9 in Clyde, which saw an uncharacteristic drop in enrolment, going from 212 in 2022/23 to 177 students this school year.
On the plus side, she pointed to the schools in Busby (K to Grade 6), which jumped by 15 students, going from 126 to 141, and Fort Assiniboine (K to Grade 9), whose enrolment went from 84 to 98 after an influx of new families into the area.
As for the other schools in the division, Nanninga said enrolment remained consistent.
In the two large elementary schools in Barrhead and Westlock, there was little change in the number of students from the previous year, going from 629 and 444 to 636 and 438, respectively.
The two largest junior/senior high schools, Barrhead Composite High School (BCHS) and Westlock's R.F. Staples, saw modest increases in enrolment, going from 629 and 633 to 714 and 638.
Neerlandia Public Christian School (K to Grade 9) and Swan Hills School (K to Grade 12) enrolment remained static, with both schools seeing a slight decrease in enrolment by less than a handful. In Neerlandia, enrolment went from 259 to 256, while Swan Hills went from 208 to 204.
The two schools that saw the most significant decline were Pembina North Community School (K to Grade 9) in Dapp and Dunstable School (K to Grade 6), going from 196 and 67 to 185 and 59, respectively.
Enrolment remained stable for Pembina Hills' two colony schools, Pibroch and Sunnybend. In Pibroch, enrolment dropped by three students to 23 from 26, while the students going to Sunnybend remained unchanged at 24.
As for Vista Virtual, for the 2023/24 school year, there are 6,993 students enrolled in distance programming, up from 6,782, but down significantly from the numbers seen from 2017 to 2021.
Board chair and West-Ward 3 trustee Judy Lefebvre asked why there was such a dramatic drop in the number of students attending Westlock's Outreach School, which dropped by more than half, going from 90 to 39.
Supt. Michael Borgfjord said there were a series of factors accounting for the change.
"It is something we are working on with the schools," he said. "We are providing more administrative support, [more innovative learning assessment technology time], and [the Outreach School] is working on developing an in-reach program and just more overall discussions between the schools."
Borgfjord added it is a long-term project, but he was confident that the Outreach school was headed in the right direction.
