It has been a busy few weeks at schools throughout the Anglophone South School District.
Staff have been working to ensure buildings are ready to welcome students back next week.
“The summer is a very busy time in our school district, even though the students and the teaching staff go home,” Superintendent Derek O’Brien told our newsroom.
“Our custodial and maintenance staff are very busy preparing schools. We would have some capital projects going on as well as just the regular deep cleaning that happens during the summer.”
Transportation staff have also been working hard finalizing bus routes for the upcoming year, he said.
Administrators returned to work last week while teachers were back in the classroom as of Monday.
The district is preparing to welcome hundreds of new students to its schools for the upcoming year.
There were 24,222 students enrolled as of Oct. 1, 2023, up from 23,699 one year earlier, according to numbers from the province and the district.
“We anticipate this year that we’ll be around 24,500 [students] and really pushing the 25,000 mark in the district,” said O’Brien.
This would mark the fourth straight year of increases and the highest number of students the district has seen in more than a decade.
Figures provided by the district show there were 26,342 students enrolled in 2006. That dropped to 23,604 by 2012 and continued to drop to 22,969 in 2016.
Enrolment was up and down in the following four school years, reaching a multi-year low of 22,519 in 2020.
O’Brien said while the population growth has been welcome following years of decline, it does create some challenges.
“One of our primary concerns, of course, is making sure that we have classroom spaces for the new students that are coming in and making sure that we have educators there in the schools in order to provide the learning,” he said.
O’Brien said there are also impacts on the transportation system since many of those students are bussed to school.
While the population growth is widespread across the district, schools in the Saint John area tend to see a larger number of newcomer families, he noted.
“Certainly we’re looking at those schools that are very, very close to having a full enrolment in the building,” said O’Brien.
Official enrolment numbers are usually confirmed at the end of September.
