Superintendent Of Corporate Services Presented Avon Maitland Trustees With Ten-Year Enrolment Projections At This Week's Board Meeting

by Bob Montgomery

Avon Maitland District School Board Superintendent of Corporate Services Cheri Carter shared the long-term student enrolment projection at last night's board meeting.

Carter says Watson & Associates Economists prepares the ten-year projection for the board every year so that the board has current data to work with when they do their planning. This year's projections indicate an increase at the elementary level of about twelve percent over the next ten years and the secondary level shows a projected increase of about nine percent. Carter says the secondary level actually shows a bit of a dip for a couple of years and then recovers nicely by the end of the ten-year projection.

Carter says those numbers are significant and consistent with what they've seen over the last few years. Since COVID the board has seen quite a bit of movement in some of their North Perth areas and in the Stratford area and they've also seen pockets of growth in Huron County, in the north in the Brookside school area and near the lake as well as in South Huron. She says there are a number of reasons for the increase. One of them is that people who lived in urban centres can now work out of their homes in rural communities. She says immigration from outside of Canada to Canada and Ontario is another factor. Urban sprawl in some of the urban centres is also pushing people closer to areas like Huron and Perth counties.

All of the information can be found on the Pupil Accommodation & Enrolment Projections page. The AMDSB Data Dashboards are also available on that page and provide information about student enrolment projections and school locations, structures and sizes, as well as AMDSB community demographic information. A full instruction manual can also be found for how to navigate and understand this information.