Student numbers dropping
Enrolment in Yk schools down by more than 100 pupils since 2010
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Published Friday, February 6, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A phenomenon Finance Minister Michael Miltenberger describes as "two-in, four-out" means Yellowknife schools are fighting a losing battle against falling student enrolment numbers.
Metro Huculak, superintendent of Yellowknife Education District 1 (Yk1), said although enrolment in kindergarten is stead, the number of Yk1 students has declined over the past five years because young families are leaving town. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo |
In fact, while enrolment at Yellowknife Catholic Schools (YCS) has increased by 32 students since 2010, there are 160 fewer students in Yellowknife Education District No. 1, according to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE).
Yk1 trustee Allan Shortt said the high cost of living is driving young families out of the city.
"Two people come to Yellowknife, they have two kids, and by the time they reach Grade 4 they leave, they just can't afford to live in this town anymore," said Shortt.
Shortt, who has been a school trustee for eight years, said the district has had difficulty maintaining a steady enrolment rate the entire time he has been on the board.
The problem is accented even more in years with high graduate rates when the schools lose more students than are coming in, he said. Fewer students means fewer dollars since the school district receives funding from ECE based on enrolment. Having funding pulled out of the board's $30-million budget to launch a territory-wide junior kindergarten program - currently on hold in Yellowknife for an eight-month review - has made school governance even more difficult, said Shortt.
"We're doing everything in our power to make sure we're providing quality education with the funding that we have," he said. "We can't fund 14 years of teaching with 13 years of budgets."
Yellowknife has lost 229 school-aged residents - ages five to 24 - since 2010, according to population estimates provided by the NWT Bureau of Statistics.
Nonetheless, Yk1 superintendent Metro Huculak said kindergarten enrolment remains steady. The district has hit an average of 158 students enrolled every year for several years, he said.
"As they're moving through the grades the enrolment is declining, so people are moving out," he said. "And I've kept tabs on that to see where they're moving and they are moving out of the territory."
He said the district's greatest competitor, Yellowknife Catholic Schools, where enrolment rates remain steady, enjoys prime locations close to new housing developments, while Yk1 schools in the south end of the city have empty space. Also, the demographics of people moving to the city show an influx of Filipino residents who tend to be Catholic, he said.
"So they want to send their kids to the Catholic schools to support their religion," he said.
Claudia Parker, superintendent for YCS, said Filipinos have been moving to the city in large numbers but they aren't the driving force behind the difference in enrolment rates.
"We've definitely had an increase of Filipino families coming to Yellowknife, and they have been enrolling in our schools, but taking a look at our enrolment increases they are definitely not the majority," she said.
Yk1 chair John Stephenson said the school districts receive 80 per cent of their funding from the GNWT. The money is dished out according to enrolment, while the remaining 20 per cent comes from taxes collected by the city and from other sources. He said the board is still working out how it will manage its money for this school year.
"If you have fewer kids you need fewer teachers," said Stephenson, who downplayed the falling enrolment issue. "By and large if there are changes in staffing we deal with that through attrition, through people who are retiring or leaving. Rarely do we have to terminate any teachers through that process.
"There's nothing alarming about the enrolment, it's been steady for Yellowknife - 229 over five years, that has an impact but it's certainly not devastating."
Huculak said Yk1 has leased empty classroom space to other school districts in the past. It has shared space with the Commission Scolaire Francophone, and with YCS when St. Joseph School was temporarily out of commission following a fire in 2006. Filling classrooms with students from other school districts hasn't persuaded the territorial government to provide more funding to Yk1.
"With our utilization the way that it is, it's difficult to convince the government to give us more funding," he said.'
If a decision were made to share classroom space with YCS, which is steadily creeping toward maximum capacity, the government might decide to provide extra funding for the Yk1 hosts, he said.
"If there was a lack of space, and they needed space to be shared, they may look at that," said Huculak.
