The other day in this space, I bemoaned the making of predictions. I had failed too many times trying to predetermine the year-end Empire Junior C Hockey League standings.

In the grand scheme of things, the smallest of small potatoes. But what if my predictions, like those of Watson & Associates, mattered? What if they had long-term effects — and they weren’t good?

In 2015, this district’s School Board started to plan its future direction with a Long Term Capital Plan. Plenty goes into creating a facilities and enrolment road map to guide how school boards manage the coming decade. The key pieces are Facility Condition Indexes — and, of course, enrolment projections.

In terms of physical plants, FCI’s are an exact science. Engineers appraise buildings and then estimate wear of tear while projecting ongoing renewal and repair costs. Once numbers are pegged, the Board has a good idea of what can be fixed, prolonged, extended, and rehabilitated and for how long.

But enrolment projections are a different story. I know this because I was on the front lines of local education reporting in the 2010s, when declining enrolment was the major concern. 

School populations, it was thought, were going down. Something called  Utilization Rates, meaning enrolment capacities, were the talk of the town. Below a certain percentage, keeping a building open cost more than it was worth. The calculations were clear: declining buildings and fewer students equals less and less and less funding. 

An elementary school is a vibrant and vital piece of the overall picture in a small community. The prospect of losing schools cast a pall in every town, village and hamlet. Worries abounded. From quality of education to what would happen to the local real estate market when parents realized the nearest school was a 90-minute bus ride from their dream home?

Consolidation was key. In the County, Cherry Valley’s Athol Central School and South Marysburgh Central School were consolidated in 2011 because of projected low enrolment. South Marysburgh was turned into a Bed and Breakfast. Athol became Athol South Marysburgh Elementary School. 

Watson & Associates is now predicting PECI’s elementary school will be at 134 percent capacity by 2035.
The high school population could be as high as 90 percent.
They predict 1,442 students will be attending PECI by 2034.

Even after consolidation, we feared that Centennial-era building was destined to close soon, too. In 2015, Watson & Associates said the school would have 111 pupils in 2025-26. But that prediction has not come true. Athol now has 186 pupils. That’s four kids short of capacity.

During the 2011 Accommodation Review the worry was that the elementary school population in Prince Edward County would dip so low that a single consolidated school would be needed in Picton, while students in the north end would be bused to Quinte West or Belleville.

But a funny thing happened on the way to 2025. A global pandemic nobody saw coming, remote work via the internet, and an incredible rise in housing costs. As we know, the past five years have welcomed many young parents trading the crowded and clogged cityscape for fresh country air. School enrolments have headed up. Way up. 

At PECI, the Board’s 2015 projections said that by 2025 the combined elementary populations of Pinecrest Memorial and Queen Elizabeth would total 486. 

Worse, PECI’s secondary students would be bottoming out at around 500. For a school that could hold 1,239, that meant a cost-prohibitive Utilization Rate of 39 percent.

In 2017, after much debate, gnashing of teeth, exasperated parents and community leaders hit in the face by the Board’s projections of stark enrolment declines moved to consolidate PECI into a single kindergarten to grade 12 one-stop-shop. 

This “solution” seemed the only way to save a County highschool. 

Combining elementary students would keep the doors open — and save teenagers from across the County spending up to 90 minutes on a bus to Belleville every morning and every night.

But again. Enrolments are not declining at the consolidated PECI. The opposite is the case. It’s bursting at the seams.

In 2024 — the only recentish numbers the school board would provide — PECI’s elementary population was 621, or 105 percent of capacity. The highschool is at 521 — a 72 percent Utilization Rate.

Watson & Associates is now predicting PECI’s elementary school will be at 134 percent capacity by 2035. The high school population could be as high as 90 percent. They predict 1,442 students will be attending PECI by 2034.

If those projections are accurate, either portables or a new wing will be necessary.

In a single decade, this community has gone from closing schools to a capacity crunch. Meanwhile, both Pinecrest Memorial and Queen Elizabeth have been shuttered, declared surplus to the school board’s needs, and sold. 

It would be the ultimate case of armchair quarterbacking to howl about these moves at this point in time. No one saw COVID coming and the pandemic was an enrolment game-changer. 

But if the Hastings Prince Edward School Board had retained the Queen Elizabeth property, wouldn’t a new, right-sized K-6 school look good at the corner of Centre and Barker right now? Wouldn’t the student life at PECI be better with a Grade 7-12 population?

A councillor exiting Shire Hall the other day likened making community growth projections to “crystal ball gazing by people with the credentials to do so.”