The Bluewater District School Board has learned they have two sets of numbers to deal with going in opposite directions.
The public school board has seen total enrolment plummet since 1998-99 by over 68-hundred students in the system.
Business Committee member Dan Wong says there is no forseeable increase in enrolment until 2025 and even then by only 700 students in the elementary level.
In the secondary school system numbers will continue to decrease by another 12 hundred students by 2025.
Wong says with the current rate of declining enrolment, Bluewater has a 29 per cent vacant space issue — something being addressed by accommodation review committees.
To add insult to injury, the board is 1.74 million dollars in the hole — most of that attributed to grant cutbacks.
However the board must fix the problem as mandated by the province.
Wong says they will take the 2010 surplus of over half a million dollars along with 844 thousand dollars from Reserve for Working Funds — and 375 thousand dollars from new pupil placement to be less than 1 per cent deficit of the board’s operating budget.
