The Vancouver school board is looking at a range of options—including school closures—in the face of declining student enrollment in the district. The board will hold a crucial daylong meeting on Tuesday (March 6) to review the situation.

“We are actually looking at one or two schools,” NPA school-board trustee Don Lee told the Straight . He said that if anything closes at all, it would probably be by 2008.

Lee said other possibilities include renting out facilities, using space jointly for daycare, and running classes for special-needs students in cooperation with nonprofit groups.

NPA board chair Ken Denike told the Straight that the panel will have a “full facility and program review” before making adjustments, which he said could include relocating programs from one school to another. Asked about the prospect of school closures in 2008, Denike said: “That's going to depend on the whole issue of the overall review.”

COPE school trustee Allen Blakey said that although the board isn't closing any school for school year 2007-'08, “that doesn't mean that it won't” in the coming years.

The board had previously projected a decline of 250 in the student population for school year 2006-'07. But enrollment figures showed a student shortfall of 1,030. “If that continues, it means that our enrollment will go down at what we would, from the basis of previous years, consider alarming,” Blakey said.

The board oversees 18 secondary schools, 75 elementary schools, and 16 elementary annexes.

There are at least three factors behind the drop in enrollment, COPE school trustee Sharon Gregson told the Straight . One reason is that fewer children are entering kindergarten than those graduating from Grade 12. Another reason is the movement of families to areas where housing is more affordable than in Vancouver. Yet another is that some children are leaving the system in favour of either home schooling or private schools.

Gregson said that the March 6 meeting will allow “staff to bring trustees up to date to all the issues and for trustees to look at what the options are and what the trends are suggesting and to make some decisions how to go forward”.

She added: “Given the overall trend in the district towards declining enrollment and underfunding from the Ministry of Education, we have to ensure that we're spending our resources wisely, and that encompasses a whole range of options to do with facilities.”