The Peace Wapiti Public School Division had an increase of 236 students in grades 1-12 for the 2022 to 2023 school season. School Division Deputy Superintendent Darren Young says that the 4.3% increase was above what the division had anticipated back in June. However, even with the increase in students, the division has been able to keep class sizes below or close to the Alberta government’s recommendation.
“We try to take an ethical approach to dispersing teaching resources across the district,” Young says. “And we actually have increased our teaching staff by a total of eight teachers.”
Young adds when they saw the enrollment numbers at the beginning of the fall the district was able to act quickly and place ads out for teachers. He says that they hired some excellent teachers to fill the needs they had.
“The needs were across the district, they weren’t just centred in our larger schools, but we had enrollment increase in 15 out of our 22 schools across the division.”
He explains that when it came to individual schools they were looking at the breakdown of the registration increase. Young says if a school saw an increase of 10 students to a school, but it is one student in each grade then the impact may be minimal.
“But if you have 10 students going into one grade three classroom, or two grade three classrooms, then that is where you will have to add some teaching time to accommodate that.”
Young adds that the division did see a decrease in registration in Kindergarten.