Surrey School Board facing an unfamiliar dilemma—declining enrolment

For decades, Surrey has been one of B.C.’s fastest-growing school districts, but it is now dealing with a different dilemma—how to handle declining enrolment.

For many years, portables have been popping up on the grounds of Surrey schools to handle huge enrolment increases in the B.C.’s fastest-growing district.

But that decades-long trend has now reversed.

“We’re definitely facing declining enrolment this year to the tune of about 890 students,” said the chair of the Surrey School Board’s finance committee Terry Allen.

It is projected Surrey will see similar drops in enrolment foe the next three school years. And in a per-student funding model, that means balancing the budget with less money from the province.

“We haven’t done it for 20 odd years,” said Allen. “Bottom line is it becomes an $8 million hit to the school district.”

Anne Whitmore with the Surrey School District’s parent advisory council says it’s too soon to know how the drop will play out.

“It’s hard to plan. Is it actually going to work out to half a class? There are a lot of things regarding class size and composition, and also distribution and catchment areas that are very difficult to adjust on the fly,” said Whitmore.

“We are concerned there will be further cuts to programming for our students. In the last few years, we have experienced cuts to helping teachers, learning teachers, band teachers. It’s just an immense amount of cuts to services,” added Amrit Sanghe, the president of the Surrey Teachers Association.

Surrey teachers and parents are urging the district to limit cuts to positions that directly impact the classroom.

“There’s not as many cuts to upper management, and the salaries are a little bloated compared to the front-line workers,” said Sanghe.

“We have chosen, from our perspective, not to go after senior salaries. But at some point, where is the parallel trimming happening both at and at the administrative side as well as from the front lines?” added Whitmore.

The district will learn what next school years per student funding number will be the day before spring break.

“The chances are it’s going to be $9,000, which it has been for many years, and that’s how we get our funding. There’s nothing for inflation, there’s nothing for programs that we have in place like ‘Strong Start,’ and ‘Ready, Set, Learn,’” said Allen.

The board is hoping the cuts it made to positions and programming last year will make balancing future budgets less painful.

“It could have been quite devastating actually, but it is not going to have the same devastation,” Allen predicted.

And, he added, there is an upside to having fewer students.

“In some of the elementary schools and the high schools where people who moved into a neighbourhood couldn’t register for their own neighbourhood school, maybe at the end of the day, there’ll be spaces available for those people,” said Allen.

While lower enrolment could ease some of the overcrowding pressure, with 16 schools worth of students learning in portables in Surrey, the temporary classrooms aren’t expected to be going anywhere.