Millions of dollars are at stake as School District 43 begins its budget consultation process next week with enrolment projections it hopes are as accurate as possible.
But with new housing developments cropping up throughout the year and new people moving into the area - especially in Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam - those numbers can be hard to pin down.
On Tuesday, the board of education heard a detailed explanation of how enrolment numbers are projected with accuracy, as this year those finely-tuned numbers were only out by seven students out of a total enrolment of more than 30,000 - that's less than half a per cent.
Being out by even a few hundred students, as the district was in 2013, can compromise district finances. (In that year, enrolment projections were out by 222 students, equating to $1.5 million in lost funding.)
And while that is not likely to be the case this year as the district is keeping as close a watch as possible on trends and shifting demographics, getting up-to-date enrolment projections for neighbourhoods in transition is challenging, according to assistant superintendent Carey Chute.
"We know there is development up there," Chute said, noting the problematic issue is "when will the units be finished? When can we count those kids? We are trying to guess eight months out."
To be able to plan its budget, SD43 had to have its enrolment projections for the following school year into the Ministry of Education by Feb. 14. For 2015/'16, the government grant will be based on a total K-to-12 student enrolment of 30,020 students, down 85 from this year.
The operating grant, and how the district will spend it to run schools without incurring a deficit, will be announced next Tuesday, April 7, during a 7 p.m. public meeting on the budget at Winslow Centre.
But between now and Sept. 30, when a final head-count is taken for the next school year, a lot of change can occur, something the district is still trying to get a handle on.
Among the areas requiring scrutiny are new neighbourhoods on Burke Mountain, where parents are lobbying for quicker construction an elementary school, Town Centre in Coquitlam, the Dominion Triangle in Port Coquitlam and even along the Evergreen Line route in Burquitlam.
Chute said the district will be monitoring the situation and planning classes accordingly but things will likely change by September.
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For now, what the numbers show is that total enrolment is flat or slightly declining in the district, with growth in the number of elementary school students offset by declining numbers of high school students as a large cohort of teenagers moves through the system.
This June, for example, the district expects to lose 2,635 full-time equivalents Grade 12 students, and in September will see about 2,374 FTE new kindergarten students. Those are just projections, however, and Chute said the district is heartened by the fact registration of five-year-olds was brisk this winter (about 85% are already signed up), which means the district is likely to meet its targets.
But organizing classes for younger students is more costly because class sizes are smaller, meaning the district will have to be more efficient with the funding it gets from the province, Chute said, and in six or seven years, the district will have more kindergarten-aged students enrolled than high school students, which could have some even bigger impacts because per-student funding is the same regardless of the age of the student.
The district also has to be able to accommodate new students moving into the area mid-year, even though it doesn't get funding for them until Sept. 30 of the following school year. In fact, the combination of such in-migration plus late-summer registration is helping to bolster enrolment by about 300 to 500 students, offsetting the loss of high school students who are graduating.
Thus, keeping an eye on the numbers and who moves to the area and when is an ongoing concern, Chute said.
But with last years' numbers on target and similar expectations for this year, Chute is optimistic the numbers will be close.
For more information about this year's SD43 budget process, which begins next week, visit www.sd43.bc.ca/budget.
