In recent years, as the ongoing enrollment drain across Flin Flon schools has begun to soften or even modestly reverse itself, education officials have held out hope that student numbers have perhaps levelled off.
This week came another indication that this may be true: combined enrollment across the four schools is up eight students compared to last year.
“It’s better up than down,” said Superintendent of Schools Blaine Veitch, who delivered the news at the school board meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 13.
Veitch presented a chart putting school division-wide enrollment this year at 985 students, up from 977 last year.
Leading the way was Ruth Betts Community School, where enrollment shot up 23 students – a 10 per cent increase – for a total of 244 pupils.
Veitch couldn’t say why Ruth Betts has so many more students.
“The history of Ruth Betts is maybe more of an up and down [in terms of enrollment] than the other schools,” he said, “so this year, for whatever reason, there’s more children, whether there’s larger families or more families, but we’re happy to see it.”
Enrollment at École McIsaac School increased by two students for a total of 403.
Those increases more than offset a drop of 15 students at Hapnot Collegiate, which is down to 270, and a decline of two students at Many Faces Education Centre, where enrollment is now 68 students.
Division-wide enrollment is still far below levels seen in the 1990s and 2000s. Between 1993 and 2014, enrollment nearly halved, dropping from 1,814 in 1993 to 977.
In 2013, enrollment fell below the 1,000 mark for likely the first time since the 1940s, if not earlier. The division’s enrollment records only go back to 1980.
A few factors are at play in the plummet, most notably Flin Flon’s gradual population decline.
Families also tend to have fewer children today than in decades past, and the availability of elementary, junior high and high school programming in Creighton has absorbed students who would have otherwise gone to Flin Flon.
