District to try to include daycare kids in numbers
Cowichan Valley Citizen
February 22, 2008
By: Lexi Bainas

The Cowichan Valley school district will ask Education Minister Shirley Bond if it can include in enrolment figures children in pre-schools and daycares that are housed in public schools.

Trustee Barb DeGroot urged the idea, saying that because the Ministry has already determined that the district has excess space in classrooms and is urging full facility utilization through such schemes as renting to daycares, that these children should be counted.

The province has also expanded the mandate of school districts to cover everyone from babies to elders, insisting that districts formulate "community literacy plans," she said, pointing out that implementation of such plans would clearly bring the people involved under the umbrella of the district and the Ministry should include these numbers in school counts "in order to satisfy capital utilization threshold numbers."

Trustees agreed.

Part of the push behind the district's desire to close smaller schools has been the Ministry's orders to cut back on empty seats by consolidating students into fewer buildings. The district is funded by the number of actual students in seats, not the number of facilities.

In addition, DeGroot was able to gain the support of her colleagues that the Board revisit the idea of offering full day Kindergarten in the Cowichan Valley starting in September 2008 as private schools are offering direct competition to the district by offering full day sessions for these young children.