Parents, students and others are being invited to let Greater Victoria school district officials know how they feel about the rules for student enrolment.
Long-term projections suggest the number of students in the district could rise to 21,000 from about 19,000 over the next decade.
The district’s 47 schools should be able to accommodate the increase, said superintendent Piet Langstraat.
“We just can’t accommodate them all in individual schools in certain neighbourhoods,” he said.
“We have to get input to determine the priorities by which we let students in school.”
A school’s current students — regardless of where they live — “get first dibs on the places in the school,” he said.
Siblings of those students are also allowed in. The third priority is new catchment students — those who live in the area near the school.
“It all worked fine when we had lots of room in our schools and we could accommodate both choice and people who lived in the neighbourhood,” Langstraat said.
“But those two are now running into each other.”
The situation marks a change from a decade ago, when a decline in enrolment led to seven elementary schools in the district being closed between 2003 and 2007.
Last November’s Supreme Court of Canada decision, which restored B.C. class-size and composition numbers to 2002 levels, is also having an impact.
“We’re getting more teachers in the system and more classrooms as a result of the ruling of the Supreme Court, of course, so those are good news stories,” Langstraat said.
“There will be more teachers and more kids in our system, first time in a long time.”
Audrey Smith, one of four parents who helped design the survey, said she raised the issue of priority registration for siblings of current students at preliminary meetings.
“We wanted to know whether or not that was still something that parents want,” said Smith, president of the Victoria Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils.
She said the survey also asks about “pathways” — the connection from elementary to middle and secondary schools — and whether they should be maintained.
There is also the question of the opportunity to attend neighbourhood schools, Smith said. “Do the neighbourhood kids have any kind of priority?”
Smith said the survey has “many boxes for comment.”
“So if there’s something that’s missing that a parent or a respondent wants to weigh in on or add to the discussion at the committee level, then this is their opportunity to do that.”
The main survey is online at www.sd61.bc.ca and will be open until April 10 at 4 p.m.
Print copies are available in English, Punjabi, Arabic, Filipino, Spanish and Mandarin, and can be picked up at schools.
Members of the public, including parents of children who are not yet in school, can also complete the survey, Langstraat said.
A separate survey has been set up for students.
A committee will look at the input and bring a report to the school board on May 23.
