Enrolment projections are on target for Chinook's Edge School Division, with a total of 946 kindergarten students so far this year replacing 1,011 Grade 12 students that attended CESD schools last September.A total of 862 kindergarten students so far this year are five years old, with 84 children participating in pre-kindergarten programs throughout the division. Overall enrolment figures fluctuate throughout September as students trickle back to school, with the final numbers due in to Alberta Education on September 30. The figure on that date is what the provincial government will base CESD's funding for the remainder of the 2012-13 school year on.“Numbers are still trickling in and it's still early in September but by September 30, which is the official count, we expect to be at or near our enrolment this time last year, and we're still hopeful we might even be up a little bit,” said Kurt Sacher, superintendent of CESD.Sacher said the division is currently well within its projections calculated last spring and have staffed the schools accordingly.Susan Roy, the division's treasurer, looked at each grade level last spring and studied how students would be moving through the system, as well as demographic data indicating how many students would be coming to kindergarten this year.“It's always a bit of a guess, but you can see patterns over time,” Sacher said.
