Students flocking to French schools in southern N.B.

French schools across southern New Brunswick are seeing a spike in enrolment even as classes are shrinking in other parts of the province.

' It's a lot of work but you're working in the positive way instead of having to go and announce ... that you're looking at closing a school.' — Luc Lajoie, District 1

For five years, District 1, which oversees French schools between Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John, has seen an increase in students while other schools, particularly in northern New Brunswick, are watching their class sizes shrink.

With classes are set to resume next week, Luc Lajoie, the director of finance and administration for District 1, said he's having problems finding enough teachers, buses and classrooms.

Lajoie said District 1 is the only district with more students entering kindergarten than graduating, and he expects the trend to continue.

Lajoie said schools in Moncton, Dieppe, Saint John and Fredericton are packed and students are still registering.

"It's a lot easier for us to have an increase," Lajoie said.

"It's a lot of work, but you're working in the positive way instead of having to go and announce to a population of a certain area that you're looking at closing a school."

Lajoie said he expects to have about 150 more students this year than last.

He said with a weak economy in northern New Brunswick, families continue to head south.

"People from the north of the province are moving down to Moncton or Dieppe or Saint John or Fredericton, Memramcook to have new jobs," he said.

"They look at opportunities that are in those urban areas and they move on."

'Not particularly good' for N.B.

David Campbell, an economic development consultant in Moncton, said the trend toward packed classrooms in the south shows an internal weakness within the province.

"Redistributing people within New Brunswick, it's good for certain local communities and local school districts, but it's not particularly good for the province as a whole," Campbell said.

A study from a few years back found 5,000 students who were eligible to attend French schools but didn't mainly because the schools weren't close by.

Department of Education rules state that a child can attend a French school if they speak French, are bilingual, cannot speak either English or French, or one of their parents was educated in French.

Lajoie said as the district opens new schools, he expects many families will choose to register their children in the French system.

District 1 is opening a satellite school in the Kennebecasis Valley to serve the growing francophone population in the area, who normally are forced to send their kids into Saint John's École Samuel de Champlain.

It is estimated there are more than 150 students from the Kennebecasis region busing to Saint John for kindergarten to Grade 5.

For those children busing into the city, some commute 90 minutes each way.

The school district hopes to have a permanent school in the Kennebecasis area by 2012.