Vancouver School Board forecasts
When planning for an uncertain future, VSB should be considering a range of scenarios
Vancouver Enrolment Trends, October 2022.
The scarcity and cost of housing is pushing people out of the city of Vancouver, and especially younger people (including families with children), so it’s not surprising to see that in recent years, enrolment in public schools in the city of Vancouver has been declining.
However, when planning for an uncertain future (how many schools do we need?), you probably want to consider a range of scenarios: hope for the best, plan for the worst. The worse the housing situation gets, as housing becomes more and more expensive, the more pressure there is on all levels of government to do something. So I’d suggest that the VSB should also be considering the scenario where more housing is built, population growth increases, and prices and rents come down, allowing more middle-income households to stay in Vancouver.
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The Vancouver school board projects declining enrolment. B.C. Stats suggest otherwise. Who's right? Nathan Griffiths in the Vancouver Sun. He quotes Michael Hooper, a professor of urban planning at UBC: “Nobody thinks those (enrolment projection) numbers are valid, except the VSB.”
New Olympic Village elementary school receives preliminary BC government approval. Kenneth Chan in the Daily Hive, June 2022. What’s the process for identifying areas where the population of elementary-school-age children is likely to increase, and for approving and building a new school? Because right now it seems very slow.
Previously: The importance of building up public services. Families with children live where there’s more multifamily housing.