The Kamloops Thompson School District is seeing unprecedented demand for its schools of choice for the coming school year.
Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Schools Rob Schoen says a year removed from every student getting into their school of choice this year it is the exact opposite story.
“We have the largest waiting lists than we have ever had for our schools of choice. I think there is a couple of things at play. Generally speaking we have about 82% of our population choosing the neighbourhood and we have about 18% choosing these schools of choice. But this year with our schools of choice we have a few less seats resulting in 35 people who would have gotten in last year who did not get in this year.”
Schoen says the other factor is the surge in students with the district’s demographic modeling forecasting an extra 100 kids in kindergarten this September.
“From the numbers I have if we could have housed everybody we would have had about 300 people choosing schools of choice. We had 197 spots. We have 97 families who are on a wait-list or two depending on how many schools they chose. Extrapolating for the kindergarten enrollment generally, which begins today, we expect to be up over 1,150 [students] somewhere in there.”
Schoen says enrollment forecasts are predicting an increase of about 100 kindergarten students when the new school year begins.