Four LRSD schools closed to transfers next year

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This article was published 23/02/2011 (5567 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two less schools in Louis Riel School Division will be off-limits for parent-initiated transfers next year — a result of declining enrolment caused by maturing neighbourhoods, according to the division’s superintendent.

Parent-initiated transfers refer to transfers of students who live in the division’s boundaries but want to a division school outside of their neighbourhood.

For the 2010-11 school year, the Louis Riel School Board chose to deny any transfer request by parents to six schools: Island Lakes Community School, Shamrock School, Ecole St. Germain, Dakota Collegiate, Glenlawn Collegiate and J.H. Bruns Collegiate.

This month, the school board decided to remove Shamrock School in Southdale and Glenlawn Collegiate in St. Vital from that list for 2011-12.

Supt. Terry Borys said in recent years, other schools have also been removed from the no-transfer lists, including Highbury School, H.S. Paul School and Ecole Julie-Riel.

“What we’re seeing now is there’s more room in those schools, there’s some breathing space,” he said.

“As a result, the division is able to entertain parent-initiated transfers to those schools.”

Borys said the pattern is less geographical, and all about maturing neighbourhoods.

Young families move into a new neighbourhood and their children go through their schooling and graduate.

“These families remain in that area of the community (but) their kids move on,” he said, meaning less young children enrol in schools.

He said that can mean quite dramatic drops, like at Highbury which had 542 students enrolled few years ago — a number that has dropped to below 400 this year.

Candice Gordon, whose two young children attend Shamrock, said she’s pleased to see the school reopen to parent-initiated transfers.

“It’s a wonderful thing. The class sizes now are so much smaller than even when my son started school five years ago.”

His classes had almost 30 students for the first few years, she said, but have now dropped to about 26.
Her daughter’s Grade 1 class has only 21 students.

Gordon added she’s not worried about enrolment numbers continuing to drop and affecting the number of resources available to her children.

“Honestly, I don’t think you could ever see too-small classes,” she said. “The more one-on-one time with the teacher, the better.”

Borys predicted that J.H. Bruns will be the next school to reopen to parent-initiated transfers, while Island Lakes is still “well-over capacity” and Dakota Collegiate and Ecole St. Germain will also likely remain closed to parent-initiated transfers in the coming years.

Even if schools do start to see lower enrolment numbers, Borys said new development such as Sage Creek could be a wildcard. Children from the community attend school in the Windsor Park and may prefer closer schools, he said.

Borys added that the division processes about 500 parent-initiated transfer requests each year, but not all of these are approved.

arielle.godbout@canstarnews.com