By Corey Fischer

Enrolment Up More In Vernon School District

Oct 20, 2017 | 6:25 AM

The Vernon School District has received a bit of a windfall from Victoria, with higher enrolment than expected this fall.

Board chair Kelly Smith says they are up 117 full time students since June.

She says it means an extra 850-thousand dollars in provincial funds.

“That money will be spent hiring teachers and also most of the money has been spent on meeting the needs of students with exceptional needs.”

While some school districts can find enough teachers to hire, Smith says they have had no problem recruiting teachers.

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“We also have enough teachers on call, so when there’s illness or whatever in the system , we have enough folks to come in and cover those classes.”

Smith says teaching assistants are also seeing more work.

“Their hours are way up. We had actually decreased the number of hours in the budget last year because of retirements and EA’s leaving the position .”

Smith says EA’s are getting an extra 14 hours a week.

by Corey Fischer

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