International student enrollment numbers at a private school in Gretna are down, due mostly to the global pandemic.

Mennonite Collegiate Institute has made a strong effort to recruit students from abroad over the last number of years, but COVID-19 has kept a number of new students from attending this year, according to principal Toby Wiens.

"A lot of our new international students were not able to come, whether that was from their own countries or from Canada, it just didn't work out for them. So we have no international students in grades 9 and 10, which feels a little different this year. However, we did have some returning students who were able to come from places like Hong Kong, China and Mexico and we even got a few new international students from northern Mexico."

Wiens says, while the pandemic has impacted their international student numbers, there is another side to this story as well.

"I think COVID helped us a little bit. As much as it was a curse, it helped us in that we are a small school on a big campus where we are doing school every day. That's a bit of a difference compared to some of the local (public) schools which are going every other day. We're able to offer school every day for high school students, so I think that's a draw for some parents."

MCI's enrollment numbers jumped by about 10 students in the last two weeks of August when parents found out that MCI was teaching classes every day at the collegiate, according to Wiens.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 restrictions have especially put a damper on the school's music programs as large choir singing is no longer possible. Adjustments have also been made to their sports programs as well.

Wiens praised MCI's teachers and staff for coming up with different ways to give students a meaningful school experience, and in many cases, using the outdoors as a classroom.

"The creativity of the teachers and staff is amazing. It takes a lot of energy and it's exhausting as it takes a lot of mental energy and I'm starting to see some of that fatigue in our staff, but you just try and keep going ... and the kids are loving it. You do it for the kids, you do it for their mental health, physical wellbeing because you'd rather see them running around outside than sitting indoors on their phones or something like that."