09/01/2026
I would like to encourage David Eby 's colleagues who are working with the school districts to look at two important issues that affect how crowded schools that currently exist are for students. For example , in my area there is a high school that was built for 800 students. Last year it had over 1,600 enrolled.
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The first issue is that families are well aware of which public schools -- especially high schools -- in school districts have strong reputations. And some will do whatever it takes to get their child into a coveted school. They're using all kinds of strategies to get their child into a school in another catchment , without revealing that they don't live in that catchment. I will always hear "la la la that isn't happening" but I have receipts. In fact, the list of strategies is so long, I'm almost forgetting all of them because it's so long. And I have a running competition in my head about how far away a family actually lives. Who get's the prize for living the farthest?
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I recall reading an article in the Vancouver Sun some years ago.
A teacher wrote that up to 40% of her class came from somewhere else, and she had no idea exactly where they were coming from, but she knew that they were slipping into the district somehow. This was a teacher who was teaching in a popular school on the west side of Vancouver and these families were driving long distances to get there. Like right across the Lower Mainland.
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Some months ago I heard that a school district in Victoria was going to develop new systems to better assess where students are actually living.
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The other issue is that people in the community can see where growth is going to happen and where families are going to move. But the municipality officials and the government officials-- even the school district officials-- seem to not want to have a come to Jesus moment and accept that this is going to happen. In the past, schools have become overcrowded and officials have said "we didn't anticipate that families would live in these kinds of buildings or setups", but of course they're going to live there. Families don't just live in houses or duplexes. They also live in apartments and small basement suites. There are large apartment complexes going up in areas where no schools are being planned from elementary to high school level, and the closest schools are completely overstuffed.
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This issue of sneaking into schools and causing overcrowding in these schools as a result, and not planning for schools properly in advance, are two areas that need attention.
