Official enrolment numbers for the Lakeland Catholic School District (LCSD) are in, and they’ve seen an increase this year.
Superintendent Joe Arruda presented their final enrolment count during the LCSD board of trustees meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 17.
Overall, they saw a 6.5 per cent growth compared to last year’s numbers. As of Sept. 30, LCSD has 2,548 students registered from kindergarten to Grade 12.
“Our enrolment is up in all schools, all eight of our schools increased,” Arruda expressed.
The district has 156 students in pre-kindergarten, bringing their numbers up to 2,704.
Notre Dame Elementary has 385 students registered for this school year, while Dr. Bernard Brosseau has 341. Notre Dame High School counted 317 students, which is the highest increase seen in the schools compared to 2017, while Holy Cross Elementary came in at 442. St. Dominic has 253 students, Assumption Jr./Sr. High has 521. Holy Family has 94, and Light of Christ has 185.
Overall, Bonnyville schools have 1,053 students registered.
Space is becoming an issue for some of the district’s schools. For example, the library at Notre Dame Elementary was turned into a classroom for this year.
“We’re maxed out at most of our schools, we have no room at all at Holy Cross Elementary. That school has every single space being used for instruction. Likewise for Notre Dame Elementary... We still have room in some other schools, but not much,” Arruda detailed.
Assistant superintendent Pamela Guilbault described the classroom in Notre Dame Elementary School’s library as “aesthetically pleasing” because of the atmosphere.
Arruda said, “Every teacher is envious of the classroom, they want to go there. For two reasons, one it’s going to be a small classroom, and a small number of kids, number two, is the view.”
The smaller classrooms are to attribute for most of the space being used, which could be adjusted if need be.
Board trustee Margaret Borders raised the concern of modifying schools in Bonnyville, which Arruda didn’t see as an issue.
“I don’t see us reconfiguring schools in Bonnyville, I think that’s fine. Especially if we get two portables (at Notre Dame Elementary), we’ll be fine,” he said, adding that there are some portables at Holy Cross already that could also be turned into classrooms if the need arose.
The only adjustment Arruda noted was the request for another high school in Cold Lake, which would require some changes.
“If that is approved, we would have to reconfigure the system in Cold Lake, go from a three-school system to a four-school system. At that stage, we’d have to reconfigure, but we will not be doing anything until we have approval for a new school,” he said.
