Kelowna

It's just before dawn and Becky Clarke is the first to line up at ​ Belgo Elementary School to registrar her child for kindergarten. More parents started to arrive at 5 a.m. then more again at 6 a.m.  and by 7 a.m. there were over 30 parents waiting outside the door.

Photo: Contributed - Parents line up at Chute Lake Elementary 

Across the city 45 parents lined up at 9 p.m. on January 31, at Chute Lake Elementary school to ensure their child had a spot in the 2012 kindergarten class.

Feburary 1, marked the first day parents could register their children for the upcoming 2012/2013 school year.

Superintendent Hugh Gloster says staffing for the upcoming school year depends on the registrations they receive during this time.

"Obviously there is a significant difference in terms of the demand being placed on kindergarten spaces depending on which schools you are taking about."

The purpose of opening registration in February through till March 9, according to Gloster, is to give the district an indication of the numbers of students at each school, in order to determine the levels of staffing needed at each location.

"We actually also end up getting our budget in early March so what we end up doing is look at what our budget is from the Ministry as well as what our numbers are and then we start determining how many teachers to allocate to our various schools."

There are 30 elementary schools in the district and Gloster says for about 25 of them there is no problem with people within that catchment getting their child registered.

"We have some hot spot area schools where we see the historic practice of parents lining up the night before to ensure that their child would get one of the available spaces, and then we saw multiple schools where there was no line up at all."

Chute Lake Elementary, in Kettle Valley, is the number one in demand 'hot spot' school according to Gloster.

"There are a lot of young families in that area and it's a new school and the day we opened it we had 17 more students than the school could handle in terms of capacity. So we had to bus them down the hill."

Modular classrooms have been added to Chute Lake Elementary, but Gloster says it doesn't seem to matter how much space is added to the site, there is going to be a higher demand than seats available in the school.

"We work closely with the parents in the Mission area to look at how we are going to deal with the overflow problem. One good news piece is that the Ministry did announce in its last capital funding announcement that they were giving us a 300 student addition to Okanagan Mission Secondary, so that is one positive for us."

Gloster says other schools that are in a similar position to Chute Lake Elementary are the French immersion or duel track schools such as Casorso and Dorothea Walker Elementary.  

"Then, we have other schools on the Westside for example Rose Valley and Shannon Lake have been hot spot schools, but it was quite orderly this morning there were only about half a dozen parents lined up who came in about 4 a.m."

Gloster encourages parents to register their child as soon as possible especially if they are in the catchment area where the school is in high demand.

"The early birds will for sure get a seat…..but while there were spaces for all of these students at Chute Lake this morning I am quite sure the spaces will fill up."

There is a board policy around the registration processes that gives certain students priories such as if a siblings who live in the same catchment area attend the school.

Parents can still register their children for school after March 9 and throughout the school year until schools close on Friday, June 29. The final registration period prior to the start of the 2012 school year, is Tuesday, August 28th, Wednesday, August 29th , and Thursday, August 30th, 2012.

If any one has any photos of parents lining up for registration please email news@castanet.net and send us your story