Education

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The Kincardine/Port Elgin Accommodation Review Committee public input portion is winding down, with the final public meeting slated for tomorrow night (March 30), at 7 p.m. at Huron Heights Public School.

Set up by the Bluewater District School Board, the committee is addressing enrolment issues relating to the three public elementary schools and the high school in Kincardine which is linked through programming to the high school in Port Elgin.

Meanwhile, the committee hosted a brief session earlier this month at Kincardine Township-Tiverton Public School, regarding how enrolment projection numbers are generated.

Jack Ammendolia, director of The Ammendolia Group, is a demographer with extensive experience doing enrolment projections for school boards in small and large centres.

He noted that the information in the current statistics is based on the 2001 and 2006 census. A new census will be done this year, with the information available next year. Updated statistics were presented to the Bluewater school board in late February on which to make a decision about whether to proceed with an accommodation review in Kincardine.

Ammendolia said Ontario's population grew by more than the national average from 2001-06. This growth is largely driven by  international migration - 600,000 immigrants settled in Ontario.

He noted that demographic and socio-economic trends, combined with robust growth forecasts for the province, suggest that the declining school-age population trends may begin to stabilize in the short- to mid-term.

Not only does he look at the number of infants up to age three (pre-school), but the number of females aged 25-44 (child-bearing years).

In Bluewater District, births declined between 2001-03, but rebounded post-2003, and have been stable ever since. For this reason, Ammendolia would recommend that the school board look at building smaller principal place schools and make it easy to build additions to them.

Using updated data, as of October, 2010, Ammendolia said enrolment projections are down, including those who would be in the new Full-Day Kindergarten programs.

"You're going to see a decline over the next few years, and then the numbers will stabilize, and gradually increase," he said.

Using several charts, Ammendolia showed that Kincardine District Secondary School has an average 89-per-cent retention rate of the Grade 8 students in its feeder schools. By comparison, Saugeen District Secondary School in Port Elgin has a 108-per-cent retention rate.

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Monday, March 28, 2011