There are more than 9,000 empty seats in Vancouver schools, the vast majority of them on the city’s east side, where a few schools are less than half full.

One tiny school, Maquinna Annex, has just 34 students expected next year, but has the capacity for 103, data provided to The Vancouver Sun by the Vancouver School Board shows. At Macdonald Elementary, there is room for 194 students, but just 70 are enrolled for next year.

In all, 36 of the city’s 110 schools are less than three-quarters full. Of those, just three are on the city’s west side.

When looking at numbers of empty seats, rather than capacity percentages, the most spaces are found at some of the city’s east side high schools. Tupper, Templeton, and Gladstone secondaries each have more than 450 spots that aren’t filled.

At the same time, downtown and near Olympic Village, schools are overflowing, and some students cannot attend their neighbourhood schools. There are 27 schools in the city that are full or beyond capacity.

While some might think students from the east side are flocking to west side schools, David Nelson, the school board’s director of instruction, says that is not the case.

“Roughly 30 per cent of families do go across boundaries, but the vast majority of those still go to school within their own zone or neighbourhood. They are moving between Templeton and Van Tech, for example, not between Templeton and Point Grey,” Nelson said. “If you’re wondering if the east side is draining to fill the west side schools, that’s absolutely not happening.”

A more likely explanation, Nelson says, is that neighbourhood demographics are changing.

“There are a lot more schools on the east side, and they are a lot closer together than (the schools) on the west side,” Nelson said.

He said the Champlain neighbourhood is indicative of the changes in Vancouver because it was an area built with a lot of family-oriented townhouses and co-op housing.

“When Champlain was developed, young families moved in. But over time, there’s no place for them to move. So they are still members of a co-op, but where are they going to go in Vancouver now that their kids have left home,” Nelson said.

The Ministry of Education aims to have schools at 95-per-cent capacity, but the Vancouver School Board isn’t sure that is the best plan for educational purposes, said Kelly Isford-Saxon, the board’s planning manager.

Older schools were not built with flexible spaces, so running them at a high capacity sometimes doesn’t allow for space to pull students out for extra help in classes like music or art, explains Nelson.

The issue of excess space in Vancouver schools is a hot topic. A special adviser has been appointed by the education ministry to look at cost savings for the district, and now that a moratorium on closing schools has expired, too many empty seats in any given school could spark debate about closures.

Also, many of the schools in Vancouver with low enrolment are in need of seismic upgrading, but have not yet been approved by the province to proceed with upgrades, the analysis of student numbers shows.

The issue came up earlier this year, when the Ministry of Education said a 2020 deadline announced a decade ago to upgrade all of the province’s schools at high-risk during a major earthquake has now been pushed back to 2030.

When asked if the ministry will fund seismic upgrades for schools where there are so few students, Nelson said staff at the school board doesn’t know.

“As we put a project forward, it’s always the ministry that decides whether or not they’re going to fund it or not,” Nelson said.

He said that older, bigger schools could be replaced with newer, smaller schools that could more easily be expanded if enrolment changes, which could save money.

Of the top four schools with the most capacity, three are ranked at high risk for seismic damage, but have not yet been approved for upgrading by the province. Of the top 10 most empty schools in the city, six are in the “high risk, not yet approved” category for seismic upgrades. Of the top 28 most empty schools, 17 are in this category.

High risk means, at minimum, that walls could fall down and the building would not be reparable after a major earthquake, and at worst, that the building will have widespread damage or structural failure.

Vancouver has a total of 40 schools that are high risk but not yet approved for seismic upgrading. In the province, there are 126 schools that are identified as high risk and are not yet approved to proceed for seismic upgrading.

The empty schools are experiencing dropping enrolment, which has been happening at Vancouver public schools for the past decade. But the Vancouver School Board is beginning to see a levelling off of declining enrolment at elementary schools, and is expecting to see the same at high schools within two years, Nelson said.

Working capacity does not count closed buildings or classrooms, classrooms that are used for child care, Strong Start Centres, adult education or district programs. And enrolment numbers do not include the city’s 1,560 international students, because they are not part of the board’s core mandate and are only accepted if there is space. Nelson also emphasized that the spaces are only physical spaces and that the school board does not have teaching staff for all those spaces.

A map of all Vancouver schools prepared by Sun reporter Tara Carman that shows their capacity, enrolment and seismic status can be found at vancouversun.com.

Sun Education Reporter

tsherlock@vancouversun.com

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