Enrollment in Delta’s public schools isn’t expected to plunge despite skyrocketing real estate prices, according to the school district.
After years of enrollment decline, the district is finally starting to see the numbers turn around as the student population increased by about 120 kids last September. Enrollment is now north of 15,200, not including those in the international program.
It’s due in part to more kids living here, but schools, especially those in North Delta, also benefit from students coming from other communities, including over 1,000 from Surrey.
Projections have the district slowly but steadily increasing its enrollment over the next few years, but could all that change if rising house prices prevent young families from settling here?
Recent stats show the benchmark price of a single-family detached house in Tsawwassen has moved over the $1 million mark, an almost 70 per cent increase over the last five years. Ladner single-family homes, meanwhile, have climbed to the high $800,000 range, an almost 50 per cent hike over that time.
North Delta prices haven’t jumped quite as much, but they’re also getting out of reach for young families.
A spokesperson for the school district noted enrollment projections here are determined by analyzing data received from a demographics contractor and adjusting each school's projected enrollment based on local trends and future housing developments using the software provided by the contractor. Housing prices are not incorporated into the forecasts.
“Certainly some anecdotal discussions do occur among our staff and school board trustees once we have received the projections, and these discussions may include some talk of the impact of housing prices. However, the rising price of home purchases in Delta are not a big factor in our demographic predictions for student enrollment purposes,” said district communications manager Deneka Michaud.
Rising house prices in Vancouver and Richmond appear to be impacting school enrollment despite both cities experiencing population increases. In Vancouver, school trustees unanimously approved a plan last month that could lead to the closure of 13 schools, while in Richmond, despite a record for building permits last year, the board of education is trying to decide what schools to close by September 2017.
Despite city growth, Richmond has lost about 1,300 students since 2009 and could shut down up to five underutilized schools as a money saving measure.
A report six years ago by BTA Works, an urban research division for Bing Thom Architects, studied the impacts of rising housing prices on school enrollment in Metro Vancouver and found that all cities it looked at, with the exception of Surrey, saw a decrease in public school student population. It pointed to the flow of students to the independent system as well as the effects of changing demography and housing costs as reasons for the decline.
A more recent report by the firm in 2013, which looked at Greater Vancouver enrollment patterns over several years, found the schools with the biggest declines were mostly in Vancouver.
Professor Penny Gurstein, director of the School of Community and Regional Planning and the Centre for Human Settlements at UBC, told the Optimist there’s a correlation between very high housing prices and school enrollment decline in Richmond and Vancouver.
“I think the house prices reflect the fact you need a very high income in order to get into the market. There probably are still young families, but a lot of young families have modest or low income. Those are the ones moving out and further away from Vancouver and from the inner suburbs, and Richmond is one of them,” she said.
“What’s happening is there is a real increase in private school enrollment. People are sending their kids to private school because they can afford to do so, but it also maybe reflects those people who are moving in that are not necessarily needing schools. They might be older or they may not be here all the time, which is definitely the case in Vancouver.”
Delta realtor Fraser Elliott said young families, either priced out of Vancouver and Richmond or who own a home there but are looking to cash in on their equity, are moving to Delta because it still offers relative value.
“We’re still seeing young families, including the local young families, that are buying here, but a lot of new young families are coming in from Richmond and Vancouver. The boomers still own most of the homes and are selling and being replaced by them,” he said.
Elliott noted North Delta and parts of Surrey are starting to become desirable options for young families that are finding Ladner and Tsawwassen too pricey.
He said the lack of townhomes and condos in Delta makes it difficult for young families to break into the market.
