FOREIGN AFFAIRS
International enrolment is up in the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»School District according to a report to the board's management coordinating committee Monday night. This year there are 110 full-time equivalent international elementary students registered, 898 secondary students and 82 adult education students. They're charged $12,000 each.
Barb Onstad, the district's manager of international education, said the number of elementary students is declining, but the number is increasing in the other two categories. "Elementary is declining because it's primarily Korean families that had wanted to bring children overseas for English immersion education," she said. "I believe [the decline] is a combination of economic factors and also the Korean Ministry of Education over the past few years has done a lot to boost English education within the Korean school system. So, there's a little less demand, plus they're just going to more and more places."
Onstad said there's been a big jump in international high school and adult education student numbers. Most are coming from Mainland China and some are from Europe, primarily Germany. Germans typically enrol for a year, while Mainland Chinese students register to graduate from a Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»school. Many of those signing up for adult ed are Chinese students who came to Canada at 15 or 16 and need more time to complete high school requirements.
The VSB doesn't have an overall cap for international students, although individual schools have caps based on myriad criteria, including projected enrolment of local students. Board chair Patti Bacchus said the VSB encourages international students to sign up at schools across the city.
MEET THE PARENTS
Parent representatives from schools around the city will hear from trustee candidates at a citywide District Parent Advisory Council meeting at the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»School Board office Thursday night.
DPAC is devoting about half an hour of its meeting to listen to candidates running in November's civic race. Two reps from each political party have been invited to speak, as well as all of the independent candidates. Each has been allotted two minutes to outline their platforms. DPAC representative Steve Baker said the parent organization has hosted all-candidates meetings that were open to the public in the past, but this is the first time it's featured a more limited format. "The invitation was sent out to PACs and DPAC liaisons with the various PACs," he said. "It's a targeted invite and who they choose to send is their business."
Baker added it's up to PAC reps what they do with the information provided by the election candidates, but he expects they will report back to their individual schools so that parents will have a better understanding of the range of candidates. DPAC and PACs are non-partisan. Twenty candidates are running for nine school board seats.
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