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Man posing as officer approaches young girl
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Decline not as big as projected Delta’s school enrollment down by about 180 as efforts to attract students prevent an even larger decrease BY
SANDOR GYARMATI
sgyarmati@delta-optimist.com
It looks like enrollment decline won’t be as bad as projected for the Delta school district. Staff provided trustees with preliminary numbers last week on how the 2010/11 school year is shaping up. Overall, the district is down about 180 students, said assistant superintendent Garnet Ayres, a figure that could have been much higher. “I’ll put that into the context that with almost 1,400 students leaving Grade 12 last year, graduating, and less than a thousand
students coming into kindergarten, we had a potential drop of 460. Our school district dropped far less than that,” Ayres said. “So we are doing a lot to attract students and people are arriving to Delta, students are coming from across the Scott Road corridor, students are returning from private school in the public system, so we have done a lot to buffer that kind of drop.” In the next four to five years the student population should flatten out and stabilize, he noted. District enrollment stands at a little under 16,000, down from a high of almost 19,000 students 30
years ago. Regarding classroom composition, B.C. school districts are required to maintain a class size average in kindergarten at a maximum of 19, while grades 1 to 3 can’t exceed 21 students and grades 4 to 7 can’t exceed 28. Ayres said Delta has met those requirements with the district average for kindergarten at 17.2, grades 1 to 3 at 20.7 and grades 4 to 7 at 27.1. In grades 8 through 12, the average Delta class size is 26. Ministry of Education rules stipulate that in grades 4 to 7, a class is allowed to exceed 30
but only with the consent of the teacher. In high school, a class may exceed 30 after the teacher is consulted, but consent isn’t required. Ayres noted no classes, as of late September, were over 30 students in elementary schools. In high schools, out of 1,819 classes, 216 had over 30 students, with 12 having the most at 34 pupils. When it comes to special needs students, of the 369 elementary school classes in Delta, 69 have more than three students with some form of special need. In high school, 453 classes have
three or more students with special needs. Trustee Simon Truelove said it was a “very worrying statistic” that some classes have so many special needs students, but Ayres said principals are monitoring those classes to ensure an appropriate learning situation. The number of English as a second language students has increased slightly to 1,389. The district is also expected to have around 260 international students this year as well as about 500 aboriginals, including 50 from the Tsawwassen First Nation.
Rotarians closing in on water park goal BY
DAVE WILLIS
dwillis@delta-optimist.com
See WATER PARK page 3
PHOTO BY
DAVE WILLIS
Tsawwassen Rotarians Gail McEwan (left) and Vickie Sangster show the club’s progress towards a new water park at Diefenbaker Park. The club has about $50,000 left to raise.
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The Tsawwassen Rotary Club is getting closer to its fundraising goal for a water park at Diefenbaker Park. The project has a price tag of $275,000 and Rotary is coming up with half of that amount in an agreement with Delta, said Vickie Sangster, chairperson of the Rotary WaterWorks project. The club has about $50,000 left to raise, she said in an interview last week. She’s hoping local groups might want to help Rotary reach that target.