Photo Credit: CFJC Today

By Silvia Senna

STUDENT ENROLLMENT

School District 73 approves new teacher hiring after an increased student enrollment

Sep 12, 2023 | 5:06 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Kamloops Thompson School District Board of Education has approved the hiring of five new elementary school teachers. This comes as a result of increased student enrollment in the district. Darcy Martin, the president of Kamloops-Thompson Teachers Association, believes this shows the need for provincial assistance.

“It just highlights the need for the provincial government to ensure that districts are properly funded and that we have the capital projects, like new school to accomodate these students and the resources to make sure they have the books they need, the tools they need and all the extra-curricular activities,” she said.

The school district was already expecting an increase in student enrollment. However, Martin explains some things can’t be predicted, which led to the last minute need for new teachers.

“If you have wildfire and a lot of people are displaced, you might see those people moving to different locations. If you have an increase in immigrations suddenly, you might see people moving in more quickly. There’s this overall peak, but there’s this reality of the world that you can’t always predict for,” she explained.

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Besides hiring new teachers, Superintendent Rhonda Nixon explains that, as of right now, there is only one solution to accomodate all students in the old schools.

“We can’t change our schools or size of our schools, but the way we’re managing enrollment growth is by adding portables. Really, that’s the only option for the board until a new school is approved,” she said.

Martin also emphasizes that even though there has been a delay in moving students to their new classrooms, it shouldn’t affect student learning.

“There’s relationship building, getting to know their classmates and the school environment,” she said. “Our district operates, for this year, slightly in excess, just the way the numbers work out, of the minimum instructional minutes — so there are no students, in my opinion, missing any instruction time,” she added.

The school district has been experiencing a drastic increase in student enrollment since 2022 and that is expected to continue for another decade.