Dozens of Vancouver families disappointed after annual school lottery

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The Vancouver School Board has conducted its annual kindergarten admission lottery for over-subscribed schools and once again the families of students not chosen are very upset.

“I felt completely gutted,” says Jennifer Laing, whose daughter applied to attend kindergarten at False Creek elementary this fall. She was notified 78 people submitted applications for 40 spots, 11 of which were taken up by the younger siblings of students already enrolled in the school.

“We are 35 spots away from getting in. It’s going to be cold day in hell before we get in there.”

Her co-op housing is a stone’s throw from the school. “So the kids she plays within her backyard will be there at False Creek and she will be elsewhere.”

Just where isn’t known yet. The Vancouver School Board says all students will be offered spots in a Vancouver school.

“In the coming months, the District will continue to manage waitlist and enrolment and determine placements for students that have been waitlisted at their full catchment school,” the district said in a statement.

Laing knows from how the has situation played out in past years, her daughter might be offered a spot at Mount Pleasant Elementary, which is located between Main and Fraser, four kilometres away.

“I feel like I’ve been robbed of the experience of allowing my kid to walk to school,” she says. “It is just ridiculous to call us the greenest city, and then have all these parents have to carpool their kids to school across the city.”

The school board won’t say exactly how many families have been put on waitlists. It will only say 13 schools have been identified as full.

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Another school that is notoriously overcrowded is Simon Fraser Elementary, on West 17th Avenue and Manitoba. That’s because it is the catchment school for the densely populated Olympic Village.

According to Emily Kennedy, Simon Fraser received 94 applications for 40 spots, 15 of which went to younger siblings. Kennedy’s daughter wound up 34th on the waitlist.

“There are five kids from my building who applied, two of which were accepted. They are our direct neighbours, and they won the lottery,” she says. For her, it’s the continuation of a problem that started when the city began to populate Olympic Village, but a new school wasn’t in the plans.

“I know this is something that is not new. My nephew last year was number 69 on the waitlist and he never got a call.”

However, the issue is gaining traction, as the population in Olympic Village grows. The NDP promised a new school for Olympic Village during the fall’s provincial election campaign.

“But the frustration is increasing because we live in a neighbourhood where more residential buildings are going up, and they are going to be attracting more families.”

The school board did not provide a list of which schools are full. Elsie Roy and Crosstown are among other schools that hold lotteries.

Thanks to parents, NEWS1130 has been learned the length of waitlists at Crosstown and Edith Cavell elementaries. One hundred and three applications were received for kindergarten intake at Crosstown, for 60 spaces, 20 of which are reserved for siblings of students already in the school. At Edith Cavell, 58 applied for 40 spots, 11 of which were reserved for siblings.

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