By Kellah Lavoie

School enrolment down across PA

Oct 13, 2010 | 5:00 PM

School enrolment across the city is down.
Both the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division and the Prince Albert Roman Catholic Separate School Division have losses in the number of students coming through the doors at their schools.
“Often we get a number of students who move to Prince Albert from the north and maybe that number was down this year,” said Alan Nunn, superintendent of schools with SRSD.
 He said there are many reasons that the numbers might be a bit lower.
“We have 32 schools, 2 or 3 students fewer at each school, I mean do the math, it can add up to a bit.”
Nunn did not have any exact numbers on how many students are enrolled this year, but said it is around 8,500 and called the drop “significant.”
Tim Jelinski, director of education for the Catholic school division, said the numbers are down 24 students from the projected enrolment. Every year the school division does this to try and predict how many teachers they will need.
“It’s just a handful in a few of our schools … not enough to make a trend out of it,” he said.
While it does not mean anything big for schools yet, it could if the numbers continue to go down.
“Future funding, that sort of thing, if the government goes back to looking at student enrolment and grants per student then certainly it could become a budget issues if the numbers drop too much,” said Nunn.
“It’s something we need to keep our eye on, no red flags going up at this point.”
It’s not all bad, while Jelinski said some schools like W.F.A Turgeon Community School saw fewer students than expected, St. Anne School saw numbers go up.
Nunn said there is nothing they can do about enrolment numbers, “It’s out of our control, students come and students go, and Prince Albert has a very transient population.”
klavoie@rawlco.com