Student numbers equal to or slightly above last year's are among the highlights of the new school year at the local public and Catholic school divisions.
Registration numbers tend to fluctuate through the month of September, but the Good Spirit School Division expects its student count to be slightly up from last year by the time the dust settles.
"It will probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of a one per cent increase, which is good," says Director of Education Dwayne Reeve.
The picture is similar at Christ the Teacher School Division.
"We're expecting that our enrollment is probably going to be almost identical to last year," says Darrell Zaba, the Catholic school division's director of education.
One outlier is St. Michael's School in Yorkton, which is up 34 students from last year and has a Kindergarten class of 45 students-its largest ever.
"Part of [the reason] is that we're the only French immersion school in the city, and that's a program that a lot of families have been really interested in," explains Zaba.
Sacred Heart High School in Yorkton and St. Henry's Senior School in Melville are both down students due to smaller middle year classes, but the growing numbers in the elementary grades bodes well for future enrollment in the high schools.
In the classroom
Changes of more direct concern to students this year include technology upgrades across both divisions.
Good Spirit School Division plans upgrades to the bandwidth of its wireless environment across the board this year, allowing for further integration of technology into daily instruction.
"We should be able to fully utilize the computers that we have in place," says Reeve.
Christ the Teacher replaced several of its elementary school computer labs for the new school year and now has SMART boards installed in 60 percent of its classrooms. More of the boards will be added this year.
Also new in the Catholic school division is the addition of in-class libraries for all K-to-8 classrooms.
"I know the students are very excited about that," says Barb MacKesey, Christ the Teacher's assistant director.
The libraries contain reading materials categorized for students of all different reading levels in each grade, and additional training has been provided to teachers to assist with utilizing the new resources.
Administration
Both division boards are in the process of bringing in new long-term strategic plans.
Christ the Teacher's new three-year plan begins its implementation this year. The plan emphasizes "gratitude" as its central pillar in the first year, and will shift to "generosity" and "trust" in the two years that follow.
Good Spirit School Division will spend the year drafting its new five-year plan. The board will likely pursue public input on the plan's priorities and present it to the public at the division's annual general meeting in February.
The provincial government's long-delayed new funding formula for school divisions will be another significant development in 2012, says Reeve.
"We're really anxious to see that, because we've existed without a funding formula now for almost four years."
