Monthly Archives: October 2006

The mystery of Vancouver’s dropping enrollment

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From 250 to 1200 then down to 750 – that’s the story of Vancouver’s changing enrollment. It now seems that the ‘final pull,’ the official end of September enrolment count, for Vancouver is only 750 students down. That’s still 500 more than was projected, but significantly less than the early statements. One school reported that the majority of their ‘missing’ enrolments can be attributed to families who have left Vancouver, some of them even out of the country. Hopefully in the weeks that come it will be possible to construct a better idea of what’s happening and why.

Previous post:October 2; September 26.

Supreme Court Says No School Fees

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BC supreme court rules that school fees contravene the BC School Act.

Victoria school trustee, John Young’s campaign for full funding of public education has passed yet another obstacle. Justice Johnston of the BC Supreme Court states in his decision: “A school board is not permitted to charge student fees for courses or for materials, or for musical instruments, that are required for students to successfully complete a course leading to graduation.”

It remains to be seen how school boards and the Ministry of Education will respond.

Fultext version of Court Decision

Blog Enteries:
Newsdaily Canada
Peace, Earth and Justice News

News articles:
CKNW
News 1130
Vancouver Sun
CBC

Background item from CBC.

More on Vancovuer’s Dropping Enrollment

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From the Vancouver Housing Blog.

The story seems to suggest that the kids are still living here, but not enrolling in kg. I don’t get that – I presume the number of kids would come from a projection of some kind of population model. My first instinct would be to think their model got it wrong, rather than the kids playing truant. Twelve-hundred children did not enroll for school in Vancouver this year and that’s causing a budget shortfall at the VSB. The deficit amounts to around 1.5 million dollars. Ken Denike with the VSB speculates on where the children have gone. He says the hundred dollars that the federal government is handing out to parents of children under 6 could mean they’re waiting until next year to send their kids to kindergarten.

The Vancouver Housing Blog suggests that the missing students can be explained by the ‘bubble effect.” According to the blog the same things has “been happening in bubble zones in the US as formally family neighbourhoods become unaffordable to new families and simply stagnate with existing owners sitting on their over-sized equity.” The author of the blog directs readers to the articles that come up from Ben Jones’s site in this google search.