After a couple of years of growing classroom sizes at St. Davids Public School, and mounting concerns among parents, the District School Board of Niagara is offering a solution that’ll bring down the school’s population.
The school board is proposing a demographic boundary change between the overcrowded St. Davids Public School and Crossroads Public School to allow some school-aged children to attend Crossroads and make fuller use of the school 10 minutes away in Virgil.
Board staff will present a report Monday at the school board’s program and planning committee meeting, recommending that trustees approve the shift.
Should they give the go-ahead, the new boundary would take effect for the 2026-27 school year.
The agenda, with the board’s recommendations, is now available online.
It follows a review of enrolment growth and school space in Niagara-on-the-Lake, according to an email sent Oct. 7 by principal Carl Glauser notifying St. Davids families of the meeting.
If approved, roughly 275 students — current and future — will move from St. Davids to Crossroads by 2034, “assuming all housing developments are realized,” the agenda said.
“The new boundary line was designed to follow a path closer to the geographic midpoint between the two schools, while also including enough students to eliminate portables at St. Davids,” it said.
The overcrowding problem at St. Davids Public School isn’t new: the school board’s 2023-2032 long-term accommodation plan showed the school was operating over capacity in 2022.
The school has five portables on site and is projected to have 462 students in 2025-26, above its capacity of 317.
If no changes are made, enrolment is expected to climb to 519 students by 2029-30 — conditions that, the agenda says, meet the criteria to consider a boundary change.
The change would reduce enrolment at St. Davids to 324 students and bring Crossroads — now operating at about 75 per cent capacity — to 551, or 97 per cent of capacity.
All housing growth in NOTL has been factored in and shows no case for a new elementary school, the agenda said.
The meeting will take place Oct. 20 at 5:30 p.m., with another scheduled for Dec. 9 at the same time.
Families can view the full agenda, including proposals and maps, on the board’s website at dsbn.org/about/board-committee-meetings/program-and-planning-committee.
