Aspen View Public School Division has 16 students more than was projected for this school year. However, there are 65 fewer students in the division than last year.
Aspen View projected it would see 2,881 students and at the end of September, they had 2,897 students enrolled. These numbers are what Alberta Education considers the final enrollment figures for per-student funding that the division will receive for this school year.
Two schools, Grassland and Athabasca Colony, came out with the number of students that were projected, Grassland has 88 students and Athabasca Colony has 14 students.
A few schools did see slight increases over the numbers forecasted.
Landing Trail Intermediate School projected 409 students and saw that figure increase by 28, Whispering Hills Primary School has 464 students as of Sept. 30, that’s five more than what was projected.
Rochester School exceeded their projected enrollment by two and sits at 60 students, while Smith School saw nine more than projected to sit at 75 students.
However, a number of other schools saw student numbers fall.
At Edwin Parr Composite, the school’s student population declined by 50 less than what had been forecast – with 98 students in Grades 8 and 9, 133 in Grade 10, 108 in Grade 11 and 118 in Grade 12.
Boyle School has 261 students, that is 13 less than projected, while the CAVE (Center for Alternative and Virtual Education) program saw 12 fewer students enrolled that the projected 56.
“We are fairly happy with the numbers because they are above projection,” Aspen View Public School Division superintendent Mark Francis said.
“We never want to be under projection.”
Rochester, Grassland and Smith School fall under the minimum critical enrolment numbers of less than 20 students in three consecutive grades.
“It is always a challenge offering programs in smaller schools,” Francis said. “Sometimes, it is in teacher expertise because of less teachers teaching more grades, sometimes the challenges are split grades, though there is a lot of research showing that can benefit children.”
However, Francis believes small schools can thrive.
“We know based on size, critical mass, you will have trouble offering more classes,” he said. “There must be something in the water, students seem to do quite well at Rochester School.”
Staffing levels
During a previous board meeting, the issue of diminishing teacher roles at rural schools was brought up with a trustee asking for the number of teachers at each school over a period of several years.
Administration has since provided those figures, which shows a trend that there are actually more teachers per student in the division than a decade ago.
For instance, Boyle had 14.55 full-time equivalent (FTE) teaching positions for 347 students in 2005, creating a teacher to student ratio of 23.85.
In 2009, the school had a ratio of 25.33, the highest in nine years. This year, that ratio is at 17.28.
Grassland followed a similar trend, with a ratio of 19.25 in 2005 that has since dropped to 11.73.
Rochester has a FTE ratio of 12.50 this year, whereas in 2005 it was significantly high at 27.25.
In 2005, the ratio at Landing Trail Intermediate was also rather high at 27.53 and now sits at relatively decent 20.53.
For the entire division, the FTE ratio in 2005 – when the student population was nearly 3,500 – was 22.32. At current enrollment, that ratio stands at 17.33.
