Elementary enrolment shortfall means OCDSB is shuffling students, classrooms

Ottawa's largest school board is shuffling kids and classrooms after finding fewer elementary students are enrolled than initially predicted. 

The chair of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) says each spring, a formula is built to predict how many students will attend its schools. 

Those ever-evolving formulas are useful since funding is, in part, dependent on butts in seats.

But Lyra Evans, chair of the board, said they also come with limitations.  

"It's only a projection," she said. "It can only ever be a projection."

1,600 fewer students than expected 

Enrolment at elementary schools is comparable to last year's figure, staying largely unchanged at just over 50,500 students. 

But while those numbers remain static, the board's forecasting was off by 1,600 students for the 2023 school year. 

"We haven't seen the families come in the way that we were expecting," Evans told CBC Tuesday. "And it's not a particularly easy thing to speculate as to why."

Malaka Hendela, co-chair of the Ottawa-Carleton Assembly of School Councils, is mother to a 12-year-old at Centretown's Glashan Public School.

She's hesitant to speculate on what's behind the enrolment numbers, but said the board may have been too optimistic when trying to balance the budget.

"But 1,600 kids for the OCDSB is a compromise to their balanced budget," Hendela told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning. "And school boards have to deliver a balanced budget under the law."

Evans said if the board can't balance its budget, it will enter the painful process of a deficit reduction plan with the ministry.

Such a process would mean cuts to programs that are considered optional and too costly. 

A board spokesperson said it's too soon to speculate on funding impacts and for now, the overestimation means students may be moved to new classes and educators may be reassigned.

Evans said the board won't have any layoffs or redundancies, according to the latest projection.

She said the board will try to maintain stability for as many as possible, noting upheavals can be challenging for teachers and students alike. 

An update on the board's website says everything from transportation issues, daycare challenges or parents sending their children elsewhere could all be possible factors.

"People could, for any number of reasons, have decided to go a different route," Evans said. "Or there could just be fewer children."

Hendela said, as a result of the reshuffling, Glashan Public School will lose one of its immersion classes — with parents unsure why, or what the change will mean for them. 

"Families are going to feel this," she said. 

The Ottawa Catholic School Board said it will present enrolment numbers at the Oct. 11 board meeting.