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WINDSOR, Ontario, September 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Another school year started yesterday, but declining enrollment has forced one Catholic school board in Ontario to not rehire almost 100 teachers in an effort to check an almost $18 million ballooning deficit. 

In a report last April, supervisor of the Windsor‐Essex Catholic District School Board Norbert Hartmann blamed “changing demographics” as one of the primary causes of the bleak financial situation faced by the Board. 

According to Hartmann’s report for the last school year, about half of the Board’s thirty-eight elementary schools are “underutilized”, meaning that they are using less than 85 per cent of the available space. Schools that fall below the 85 per cent “utilization threshold” cost the board more to operate than what government funding provides. 

Hartmann called school underutilization an “important contributor to the structural deficit,” pointing out that the problem could be addressed with the closure of nine average-sized elementary schools within the Board. 

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Enrollment in the Board has been on a downward spiral, with projected enrollment down by over 1,000 students from the previous year, 21,912 to 20,885. Hartmann noted that the decline would have been larger had not the Board added full-day kindergarten classes this year. 

This year’s drop in enrollment is estimated to result in the loss of approximately $7.6 million of government funding. 

Emphasizing the “magnitude of the dilemma”, Hartmann demonstrated how the current declining enrollment at about 4.7 per cent would continue to place “significant pressure” on the Board’s budget in future years. More kids are graduating each year than are enrolling in junior kindergarden. 

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“It is evident from the data that the downward trend in enrollment is projected to continue year-over-year,” he said. 

Playing the math forward 13 years, Hartmann predicted that if the current enrollment remains constant each year into the future, and no other factors change, the Board would decline to a nominal enrollment of 11,774 in 2026-27, a drop of 9,377 pupils. 

This represents a staggering 44 per cent decline when compared to this current year. 

Life and Family leaders have warned for years about the coming “Demographic Winter” as a result of the worldwide decline in birthrates. 

In 2009, celebrated columnist and pro-family leader Don Feder dedicated his keynote speech at the March for Life to the problem. “In the Western world, birthrates are falling and populations are aging. The consequences for your children and grandchildren could well be catastrophic,” he said. 

StatsCan reported this year that Canada’s fertility is continuing to decline. With a total fertility rate of 1.61, Canada is falling further and further away from the 2.1 children per woman required to replace the population in the absence of migration. 

For Feder, having children goes hand-in- hand with having faith in the future of humanity. 

“Only those who have faith in the future, have children. Those who don’t, don’t,” he said. 

“The pro-life position is based on the premise that each life, born and pre-born, is infinitely precious. How often have we heard the catch-phrase ‘the children are our future’. To put it another way, without children, there is no future.” 

Life and family leaders have regularly made the connection between lower fertility rates and the erosion of real marriage, the breakdown of the family unity, an entrenched contraceptive mentality, and widespread use of abortion. 

It’s no secret that many Catholics dissent from the Church's teachings on sexuality and reproduction, following the cultural trend of having one or two children. 

Of 824 Catholic women polled in 2011 by inc./WomanTrend, 85 per cent believe they could be “good Catholics” even if they do not accept some of the Church’s teachings on sex and reproduction. 

More than half of the women in the study who dissented from Church teaching cited a couple’s “moral right” to decide which method of family planning they will use. 

The Windsor‐Essex Catholic District School Board is hoping that a future “full recovery” of the economy might set the stage for Catholic couples to have more children.