The term "having growing pains" can be applied to just about every school division in Canada at the start of a new school year, but for Rocky View Schools (RVS) it has far greater ramifications.  

The latest enrolment figures, which RVS superintendent Greg Luterbach says seem to fluctuate day-to-day at this time of the year, show the enrolment was 25,601 as of Sept. 13. That's an increase of 920 students from the last school year.

With the lack of a provincial budget to give the division an idea of how growth will be funded, Luterbach says they're trying to ensure that all student and staff needs are looked after.

"Uncertainty creates challenges," Luterbach says.  "Normally, if we knew we had 250 odd more students than we thought we were going to have, we'd know what sort of grant we'd get and we'd know for sure how we could support those additional 250 students.  Right now, the government has committed that they're going to fund growth and that's critical for a school division like Rocky View that's growing by almost four per cent every year.  We don't know the details of how that growth is going to be funded."

Because of that uncertainty, Luterbach says they've looked at the student population in schools and have rebalanced some staffing between schools with higher, or lower than expected enrolments in K through grade 8. He says the real challenge lies with RVS high schools, particularly the two in Cochrane. 

Luterbach says altogether in RVS, there are around 200 more students than expected in high schools so they're meeting with administration to see where the pressure points lie and how to best support students through the first semester until they know the money that will be in the budget.

Bow Valley and Cochrane High are bursting at the seams with 90 to 100 more students than were anticipated, which Luterbach admits has led to some large class sizes at those schools.

"Until we're able to put some more resources into those schools, some of those class sizes are larger than we would like so that's why we're really looking at those and focusing on our high schools now that we've got our younger learners resolved."

Luterbach says the uncertainty of not knowing what the government's budget will contain for education makes it sometimes tough to sleep at night but they're trying to do the best with what information is available.  

"From a board perspective, we've built a budget that assumes that growth is going to be funded, it assumes that we're still going to get transportation fee replacement grants and school fee replacement grants.  Until we know the details of what that budget is going to look like, definitely there is some uncertainty and we're being conservative while trying to support all of our learners but we're also trying to do that and also hold on so we don't have to have massive changes if required this fall."