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The Vancouver School Board is proposing changes to the Mount Pleasant, Kitsilano and Downtown catchment areas in order to shorten wait lists at certain schools.
But data analyst and parent Jens von Bergmann said the school district should have seen this coming.
Census data from 2006, 2011 and 2016 show children are taking up an increasing amount of the population share in Vancouver’s city centre. The overall number of children in the city centre has also increased, according to von Bergmann’s analysis.
“We see it for Olympic Village, we’ve seen it for Coal harbour and Yaletown,” he said.
Some families are no longer opposed to raising children in condos, he explained. Von Bergmann lives in a two-bedroom condo with his eight-year old child near the University of British Columbia.
“If you just look at past enrolment, you’ll get a good idea of what is the next year enrolment,” he said. “But I think you’ll get terrible projection if you want to know what is happening five years down the road — that is what’s needed for planning.”
StarMetro Vancouver Fri., May 18, 2018