The trend of declining enrollment continues in the Quesnel School District.
The numbers, announced at the last Board meeting, were down for a third straight year.
Secretary-Treasurer Jennifer Woollends says “the total head count of students that we had in the District at September 30th was 2,811. This is about 107 students less than last year and 43 fewer students less than we budgeted for.”
There were 2,918 students in 2024, and 2,981 in 2023.
Woollends says that trend is expected to continue.
“The declining enrollment will be a trend if there isn’t migration into Quesnel until we see a leveling out of the Kindergarten entering the system and the grade 12 students leaving the system. We do see a leveling off in the next 4 or 5 years as the larger cohorts in the middle and high school kind of work their way through.”
This year’s decline would leave the District with a projected budget shortfall of almost 578 thousand dollars.
Woollends says that left the Board with two options to make up the difference.
“The Board looked at the options of reducing expenses for the current year or using operating surplus to offset any reduction in funding, and the Board made a motion to offset any reductions in funding with operating surplus.”
Woollends says the province will sometimes offer funding for declining enrollment.
“There are still amounts for declining enrollment. You can get a bit of funding for that and there is also funding protection. At this point we haven’t hit funding protection but we won’t know the results until, the next funding announcement is in December, so in January the Board will give a report on that.”
Funding protection eligibility is based on a percentage of a decrease from the previous year.
Woollends says it is a complicated calculation.
