Technolandy

Day 178 (of 2025/26) the math of graduation celebrations…

I’m hearing a negative trend in a number of school districts – fewer kindergarten students than graduates… that math makes it tough for “big education” to feed the machine… We like to celebrate the graduation ceremonies that take place in high schools (and the ‘leaving ceremonies’ that take place when students transition from one school to another – elementary to secondary being the most popular school setup in our province… but I’ll note that my “Grade 7 Celebration” was that we got to sit on chairs in the final assembly of the year. That’s all I recall… and I”m going through a nostalgia binge with the passing and celebration of life of a friend I grew up with, so… 

But school principals are also watching the enrolment forms as much as the diplomas… and when there are not as many coming in as moving on… that has a big impact on the number of divisions a school can fund – we are guided by our grade ratios in brick-and-mortar buildings: kindergarten is capped at 20, grade 1-3 can have as many as 24, and grades 4+ can populate 30 in the room… I’d like to say these are guidelines and maximums, but in practice, they tend to be targets to maximize the budget implications… less clear in our provincial online learning schools, but we also have even less of a ‘projection’ as to our school size since families can pop in and out as it makes sense for their ability to be home learning facilitators. This year we have more graduating students (primary with us – we always have a LOT of students who cross enroll for courses they can’t get) than ever before… and I’m noting an uptick in the number of kindergarten sign-ups too…  families like the flexibility of home facilitated learning with the guidance and support of a teacher on the other end of a phoneline/email chain!

But I think you’re gonna see more news reports as budgets get reworked and rejiggered based on the most recent updates that schools always do to put together what they hope September looks like… though I’ve always seemed to be in schools where whatever we planned and organized in June… we always had to redo it in September – so much so that I’m much more of a fan of putting some combos together, but leaving the confirmation of class lists until the second day of school… after we see all the faces that actually arrive in school in September as a couple of summer job offers can make a big impact in who is with which teacher!

Maybe that’s why graduation season always feels a little emotional.

We celebrate the students moving on, but we’re also reminded that schools are constantly changing. The faces that filled the hallways this year won’t be the same ones next year. Some students leave. New students arrive. Communities grow, shrink, and reinvent themselves.

The math matters. It shapes budgets, staffing, and planning.

But long after we’ve forgotten the enrolment projections, we’ll remember the people we got to sit next to!