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Published Sep 06, 2023 • Last updated 4 minutes ago • 4 minute read
School buses begin to line up at Owen Sound District Secondary School on the first day of school Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023 in Owen Sound, Ont. (Scott Dunn/The Sun Times/Postmedia Network)
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Schools were crowded places on the first day of school in most parts of Grey-Bruce, Sept. 5.
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Bluewater District School Board particularly continues to face escalating enrolment, adding pressure to build more schools and add portables. The Catholic board is facing some challenges too.
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Bluewater projects average enrolment around 18,500 students, three per cent more than last year. But the board has seen enrolment grow for at least the past four years straight, Rob Cummings said, the board’s superintendent.
He called that “excellent news,” noting overall board average school utilization — the number of students per available space in schools — is up around 90 per cent. That level of enrolment ensures there are more teachers and funding is “at a good level.”
Ten years ago, enrolment was less than 14,000 — more than 30 per cent less — and there were school board accommodation reviews and school closures. The provincial funding formula was criticized for disadvantaging low growth, rural communities.
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Now the board has had to find room for all its students.
Bluewater added 13 more portables this summer, bringing the total across the board to 47. Most of them are concentrated in high growth areas of Dundalk, Port Elgin and Meaford, Cummings said.
Asked about Meaford, Cummings said the COVID-19 pandemic spurred a move to remote work and influx of those workers. Other growth contributors likely include people living year-round in second homes, and a younger generation is moving into homes of an older generation, he suggested.
Just two years ago the board opened Georgian Bay Community School in Meaford, a new, consolidated kindergarten to Grade 12 school and this summer the board added five more portables there this summer.
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Given 90 per cent utilization of space and the use of more portables, the board is looking at adding more classrooms in some places.
Cummings noted two school replacements, Markdale’s Beavercrest elementary school, which is targeted to open next September, and Kincardine District Senior School (Grades 7-12), which has no timeline yet because the location remains to be selected.
Markdale’s school will hold 328 junior kindergarten to Grade 8 students, the same as the current school but up from the 236-student school originally approved by the province. Kincardine’s new school will hold 880 students, 100 more than the current school.
“What we do now with our replacements is we build them so they are expandable . . . there’s a footprint area that’s permitted to be expanded when we apply for the permits for these schools,” Cummings noted.
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Bluewater will be applying for funding in the coming weeks to build a new “growth” school for 500 or 600 students in Dundalk and a “growth” school in Port Elgin.
“Those are two high growth communities. We expect growth to carry on for a while. Even going out long range, we’re expecting probably additional schools in that area down the road in those communities.” Each will “probably” need another new school in 10 to 15 years, Cummings said.
In Owen Sound, enrolment is “pretty stable” but staff are monitoring development plans, particularly the Flato Developments subdivision on 8th Street East. He said school populations in Owen Sound are “right where we want them to be,” he said. Alexandra has some portables but the rest are all within their capacity,” he said.
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Meanwhile, enrolment at Bruce Grey Catholic District School Board expected to be stable with last year, with a projected enrolment of about 4,700 students, director of education Gary O’Donnell said Tuesday. No additional portables were added this school year.
But the board’s average space utilization rate was 117 per cent last October, the latest figure he could find.
Plans call for replacing St. Mary’s High School in Owen Sound. The school was built for 660 students and more than 1,000 attend it. It’s at the site selection committee stage and it will take four or five years before that school is built, O’Donnell said.
Elementary school enrolment in the Catholic board is experiencing “steady growth.” Notre Dame alone in Owen Sound has six portables.
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Once the new high school is built, “we will be looking at enrolment at all of our schools in the Owen Sound area and then going forward with an Owen Sound plan around how each of the schools will be utilized,” O’Donnell said.
Meanwhile, St. Anthony’s School in Kincardine will soon open an eight-classroom and daycare addition. Once open, it should allow students in six portables there to all be housed in the school to “address the overcrowding there,” he said.
Holy Family School in Hanover was built for about 230 students but 326 attend there. “So we need to look at a permanent solution for that facility and that site and that’s what we’re in the process of undertaking right now,” O’Donnell said.
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