Increasing school enrolment across Manitoba creates strain for some divisions, opportunity for others

Manitoba's largest school division leaned on extra teachers hired at the last minute and turned parts of libraries into new classrooms to keep up with the influx of new students it saw this school year — a jump its superintendent says was largely driven by newcomers, including refugees fleeing global conflict.

That bump resulted in an extra 829 students across the Winnipeg School Division, compared to the previous school year. It's the largest increase in any division in the province's latest enrolment report, which is based on numbers from September 2024.

"We don't often anticipate 800 more students coming into our schools year after year," superintendent Matt Henderson said in an interview.

"There are many folks who are having to leave their own home countries or northern areas of Canada and come to Winnipeg — and that's through global conflict, that's because of climate change, that's because of a number of reasons," he said. "As a city, we need to be prepared for that. We need to be able to welcome folks and be nimble."

Henderson said the schools feeling that the most include those in the Elmwood area, where some have been a "landing spot" for people coming from Ukraine, and schools near the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba, a central area that has seen an influx of people from countries in parts of Asia and Africa.

The strain on schools has been propelled by a need to both have enough teachers and classrooms to keep class sizes down, and to ensure newcomer students who need help with language or trauma have the support they need, he said. 

While enrolment increased in most of Manitoba's school divisions this year, the stories behind those numbers varied — from immigration and new developments pushing up population size, to special programming potentially enticing new students to make the switch from other schools. 

In the adjoining Louis Riel School Division, schools have also seen a jump in students driven by new and ongoing developments and infills in the division's southeast Winnipeg catchment area — growth that is especially apparent across the division's French immersion schools, superintendent Christian Michalik said in an interview. 

The division had the third-highest increase by numbers across the province, with 412 more students over the previous school year, the province's report said. Michalik described the bump as "the equivalent of many an elementary school," and said it highlights the division's need for more space.

An example of the strain the division faces is its newest school, in Winnipeg's Sage Creek neighbourhood, which has been under consistent pressure since it opened in 2017 and continues to struggle with overcrowding.

By the time another school in the area opens this September — after being requested in 2013 — it's expected to be at capacity, too, Michalik said.

"We've done a lot of what we can do with the schools that we have, with the buildings we have, to find solutions to the growing enrolment and the overcrowding, but we're running out of those solutions," he said.

That's previously included repurposing English schools as French immersion ones, and this September will see students in grades 7 and 8 at St. Vital's École Varennes — which Michalik said was built in the 1950s as flood relief — moved to another nearby school with more room.

Challenges,opportunities in rural Manitoba

While they don't have the same numbers as schools in the more densely populated Winnipeg, rural Manitoba divisions were among those with the highest enrolment increases by percentage — including Morden's Western School Division, which superintendent Stephen Ross said is "bursting at the seams," due largely to high immigration rates in southern Manitoba.

It saw an increase of 113 students from the previous year, which represented a 5.1 per cent jump for the smaller division, bringing both challenge and opportunity.

On one side of that equation, there's the need to have enough space and attract enough teachers to offer "the kinds of programming that kids deserve in this province," Ross said in an interview. Some students are still learning in portable classrooms, and a new school that opened this year is already expected to be near capacity by next fall.

But the increase in students has also meant more jobs that need to be filled to keep up with the demand — and the increase in skilled labour in the area, with immigrants coming from countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil and Norway, has brought new people ready to fill those roles.

"Right now, our facility supervisor is from the Ukraine, my secretary-treasurer is from the Philippines, our transportation guy is from Wales and our human resources person is from Kazakhstan," Ross said. 

"I think Morden is a great example of sort of, you know, what the Canadian dream is for people coming to the country."

Welcome boost for 2-school district, independent schools

It's been a different story entirely in Pinawa's Whiteshell School District, which, with its two schools, saw Manitoba's biggest enrolment increase by percentage at 13.8 per cent (or 27 students) this year, as of the province's latest report.

The eastern Manitoba district previously noticed it was losing students who chose schools in the province's francophone school division or those with offerings like vocational classes. But superintendent Kent Schiltroth said a recent push to reverse that trend may be slowly paying off.

That's included promoting some of the areas where the district differs from other divisions, like offering both half-day junior kindergarten and full-day kindergarten, and expanding its outdoor education offerings.

"That became a big thing for our board, is to say, 'We've got this really unique environment in Whiteshell…. Nature's right at our back doorstep. And so let's lean into that really hard,'" Schiltroth said, adding the district is trying to both attract students from bordering communities and focus more on bringing in international students through exchange programs.

"Every time that new people come into town, they've got new experiences, new backgrounds, new philosophies, and it's just kind of the way that the town's been built — very accepting of new ideas," he said. "And we've kind of embraced those. And so for a small school, we're able to tap into a lot of those resources that people come with."

And it wasn't just Manitoba's public schools that saw an uptick in enrolment: independent schools across the province also jumped by 5.5 per cent, or 1,038 students.

It's a welcome trend that Andrew Micklefield, executive director for the Manitoba Federation of Independent Schools, said has been ongoing for some time.

As for why families choose independent schools, "there are as many reasons as there are families and as there are schools," Micklefield said, though most often they're driven by the range of faith-based options in the province's independent schools.

"It's a diverse group, and parents with those faith backgrounds often appreciate the opportunity to educate [with the] Manitoba curriculum, Manitoba certified teachers — but also have a faith component too."