Thousands of Calgary Catholic School District students head back to class

As summer winds down, tens of thousands of students in Calgary and its surrounding communities are heading back to school.

Tuesday marks the beginning of a staggered return to class for Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) students.

Glenn Johnston, principal of Holy Name School, says it’s the best day of the year.

"It's the excitement in the air. New beginnings, new grade for all the students. In some cases, a new school for them, so it's just an exciting time."

Marjorie Junio-Read’s daughter Celeste is heading to Grade 1.

"It's a big day," said Junio-Read.  

"We're really excited for her to start learning again, for her to get into the routine, see all her friends and just really start to grow."

There are now roughly 60,000 students spread out across 118 CCSD schools.

With Calgary's population growing rapidly, so too is student enrolment.

The CCSD saw an increase of 2,154 in enrolment for the 2022-23 school compared to the prior school year, well above the district's prediction of 1,400 new students.

CCSD superintendent Bryan Szumlas says the Catholic school board is increasing its teaching staff to deal with the influx.

"Our pupil services team have worked really hard over the summer months to hire teachers," Szumlas said.

"We had to replace about 150 teachers that retired in the spring, and then, as we go forward here into the fall, we're looking at hiring approximately … just under 100 teachers as we go forward."

The increased enrolment brought the average school utilization rate up to 84.26 per cent, which is still just below the provincial benchmark of 85 per cent.

However, some CCSD schools were still at or above capacity.

"We know this year, we're not opening any new schools other than our storefront outreach, high school to help some of our most vulnerable youth," Szumlas said.

"Right now, we're going to make it work with the space that we have. Consequently, our classes may be a bit larger, but really, students don't come to us in nice little classrooms of 25."

Much like the Calgary Board of Education, the Catholic district will have to work on balancing out enrolment and increasing capacity in more popular communities.

Szumlas says some over-capacity CCSD schools are moving students to schools with lower enrolment.

"We do have some schools right now within Calgary Catholic, where we are controlling their enrolment and so they are redirected to other schools. And we especially see this in new booming communities. So when we look around the city of Calgary which is growing extensively, some of those new communities that are coming online, the Catholic students are bused to certain schools that do have room"

Tuesday also marks back-to-school for Rocky View Schools (RVS), which has recently seen some of the most significant jumps in student enrolment.

Heading into the previous school year, RVS saw its number of students jump to 27,772. That represented a 4.3 per cent jump, far exceeding the school board's prediction.

That board includes schools in Airdrie, Cochrane, Chestermere and other communities to the north, west and east of Calgary.

The latest CCSD and RVS enrolment data should be available in the coming weeks.