The official registration numbers aren't going to be recorded until the end of this month, but as of mid-September, there is a clear indication of slight increases in school enrollments in Estevan and area schools.
Figures released by the South East Cornerstone Public School Division and the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division, show very modest student enrollment hikes in most schools or corresponding slight decreases in a few.
Total enrollments in both divisions are up a bit compared with last year with Cornerstone now boasting 8,144 students enrolled in their PreK to Grade 12 system compared with the 8,117 who were registered by Sept. 28 last year.
At Holy Family, the total is now 1,171 compared with the 1,125 who were registered at the end of the last school year.
The biggest upward change in student registrations have happened in Stoughton and Lampman whose PreK to Grade 12 programs have attracted 229 young people in Lampman and 186 in Stoughton. Last year, Lampman's school had 216 students on the official rolls while Stoughton had 171, representing school population increases of 13 and 15, respectively.
Weldon School in Bienfait also showed a slight improvement in enrollment with 134 students registered this year compared with 130 last year.
Two other Cornerstone schools outside of Estevan are recording small decreases with Macoun having 46 students registered in their PreK to Grade 6 program compared with 50 last year.
Midale Central School showed a decline of seven students with 151 registered students this year in their PreK to Grade 12 setup.
The largest school in the Cornerstone system, the Estevan Comprehensive School, saw enrollment remain pretty static with 849 registered there this year compared with 850 last year in the Grades 9 to 12 facility.
In Estevan's public elementary school system, only one school showed a decrease in population and that was Spruce Ridge, which went from 436 students last year to 421 this time around.
Hillcrest School has seen an increase from 155 to 166. Pleasantdale School is up slightly in numbers from 224 to 227 and Westview School is just under the 200 mark with 199 students in the classrooms this year compared with 192 last year.
Over at Holy Family, the two Estevan-based schools showed a net increase in enrollments of just two students with Sacred Heart/Sacre Coeur having 286 students this year compared with 282 who were on the attendance rolls at the end of last year while St. Mary's School is showing a small decrease from 230 to 228.
St. Michael's School in Weyburn is showing the largest increase in student enrollments in the Holy Family five-school system with a population of 477 this year compared with 429 last year. St. Augustine in Wilcox has improved from 46 to 51 while St. Olivier School in Radville, with a PreK to Grade 12 program, has declined to 129 from last year's 138 students.
In the city of Estevan alone, there are now 2,436 students registered in formal public or separate school programs.
April Bent, the communications manager for S.E. Cornerstone, said the registration numbers are still somewhat fluid and there were still some slight adjustments expected in some of the division's 38 schools before the official tally is taken for the Sept. 30 report that will be filed with the Ministry of Education. The numbers that go into the Ministry on that date will be the ones used for the provincial funding formula. That formula will go a long way towards dictating what the divisions receive for this year's elementary and high school programs.
The increase in the public division represents a third consecutive year in which the enrollment numbers have improved. Prior to that, most of the school divisions outside of Regina and Saskatoon, experienced slight or even significant decreases in registrations.
