Enrolment in Toronto’s public elementary schools is down this year by almost 2,600 students — a larger drop than expected that is in part blamed on the ongoing protests over the province’s new sex-ed curriculum.

Trustee Jerry Chadwick, who has been chair of the budget committee for the past four years, said the board is now looking at how big an impact the new health curriculum has had on the numbers.

As of November, the board counted 169,419 elementary students, lower than the projected 172,004.

“We’ve been told that (enrolment) is bouncing back to a certain extent, but there are still a lot of kids unaccounted for,” he said. Opposition to the sex-ed curriculum “was one of the factors, and the board is trying to find out the other factors.”

While Thorncliffe Park school has seen the largest drop in enrolment that’s been directly attributed to the updated sex-ed curriculum — which began with 800 students not showing up for school, but gradually declined to 100 — other smaller pockets were affected last spring when parents kept their kids out of school to express their objection to the curriculum, which was implemented this fall.

Some students are being home-schooled, while others are believed to have transferred to private schools.

Thorncliffe lost two Grade 1 classes and two teaching positions. Nearby Valley Park Middle School is down 90 students, losing one class and one teaching position.

Overall, the elementary enrolment drop means a $16 million shortfall in funding, but because of staffing “offsets” the net loss is $2 million, explained Carla Kisko, associate director of finance and operations for the Toronto District School Board.

“We don’t staff up entirely — we identify staffing requirements (in the spring) but wait for all the kids to get in place in classes before we do a full, final staffing allocation” in the fall, she said. “So in the interim, you use the attrition that you experienced in the past June to help, and (fill in the gap) until permanent student are in class.”

That means the board doesn’t have to issue pink slips because the attrition “helps buffer the gap” which is a common practice among boards, she added.

While the sex-ed protests were a big concern at the start of this school year, “in some locations, it had some impact, but it was not as great as what was initially anticipated” because they didn’t last long and most children soon returned to school, she said.

“There were outreach efforts — attempts by principals and central staff to reach out to those families that we felt needed further clarification on what the curriculum is all about. Where we are sitting now is a better position than where we were at the start of the year.”

Population changes and the cost of living in the city could also be factors in the drop in numbers, along with lower-than-expected enrolment in the early years, including kindergarten.

“We are hoping to get to a better place of stability than the numbers are currently indicating,” Kisko said. “It could have been that our projections were more ambitious because of the previous trend (upwards). You are never dead-on with projections… it is a projection we continue to modify and will become more conservative when we are looking into 2016-17.”

However, she added, the coming waves of Syrian refugees will affect enrolment, “and how is that going to impact numbers, all those factors come into consideration and will have to be worked through as we do our projections for 2016-17.”

The board says it has looked at the Toronto Catholic and French boards’ numbers, and there’s no indication students are leaving to attend those schools.

She said making up for the $2 million funding loss can be found within the existing $3 billion budget.

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“Not everyone is going to actually spend exactly dead-on to the budget line in each department,” and all have been warned there’s “a bit of pressure on the bottom line, so let’s be cautious with our spending. But I believe we are still on track to” maintain a balanced budget.

In its early budget projections for the 2016-17 school year, the board is estimating a $10 to $15 million shortfall. Last year, trustees had to cut $16.5 million to balance the books.

Provincial grants will be announced in the spring, Kisko added, giving the board a better idea of where it stands.

“It’s still early in the process — so stay tuned.”