While recent provincial funding announcements have provided a tough blow for the administration of the Hanover School Division (HSD) this year, it wasn’t all bad news in the end.
At the division’s March public meeting, superintendent Shelley Amos announced that enrollment this year is up by 242 students beyond what the division had budgeted for.
For any Manitoba school division, that’s good news, as higher enrollment is synonymous with increased government funding.
“It’s good news as we continue to experience growth,” Amos said at the public meeting. “We are not quite caught back up to what we were pre-pandemic with student enrollment… As we continue to catch up, then we’ll continue to see additional funding from the province.”
On September 30, 2019, just months prior to the pandemic crossing Manitoba borders, HSD enrollment was at 8,353 students across its 19 schools. One year later, in September 2020, enrollment dropped to 7,760 students, a loss of almost 600 students division-wide.
Amos says there are likely a few factors involved, including parents’ choices to homeschool based on health concerns, family relocations, or simply a change in demographics.
Now things are looking up. As of March 2023, enrollment is up to 8,480 students. Recent immigration to the region is responsible for about 235 of these new students.
Amos adds that, according to all indications, the division will see at least the same number of new immigrant students again in the coming months, and possibly more.
Each year, the division receives added base funding from the province based on the number of students enrolled who require English language support.
Beyond that, divisions can apply for funding through the Newcomer Support grant. According to Amos, a school division can use this funding in whichever way it deems fit. HSD chose to apply their grant funding toward additional teaching staff.
“We asked for two additional teachers to be funded to support divisionally the growth that we’ve had in immigration in particular,” Amos said at the public meeting. “We did receive half of [the $200,000] we asked for… so that’s allowed us to put in a half-time teacher at the SRSS with their large immigration enrollment and a half-time divisional teacher who supports all of our schools.”
And thanks to a recent provincial government decision to increase immigration opportunity this year through the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP), the province will be eligible for almost 3,200 more nomination spaces over last year.
As part of the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada multi-year allocation plan, a total of 9,500 immigration nominations will be allocated to Manitoba in 2023.
“The Manitoba government advocated strongly for this increase, which will enable us to further leverage immigration to grow Manitoba’s economy and meet labour market needs in critical sectors, including health care,” said Labour and Immigration Minister Jon Reyes earlier this month.
According to Reyes, the MPNP accounted for 64 percent of Manitoba’s newcomers last year. Since the program was introduced in 1998, a total of 185,000 nominees have arrived on Manitoba soil from around the world.
In recent years, the top immigration destinations for immigrant nominees were Brandon, Neepawa, Winkler, Thompson, Portage, and Steinbach.
Regardless of the cause, HSD is glad to see that enrollment numbers are trending upwards. Current enrollment across HSD’s Grade 12 classes equals 570 students. Comparing that to the 607 students enrolled in Kindergarten, things appear to be looking up.