Living Sky School Division has had the ear of the Ministry of Education of late, with a visit from the assistant deputy minister and the deputy minister as well.
Thursday last week, deputy minister of Saskatchewan's education ministry, Dan Florizone, was in the Battlefords to meet with the chair of the Living Sky School Division board and with the director of education. He also visited classrooms in two schools.
Florizone was moved to the education ministry in June of this year. The former CEO of the Five Hills Health Region had been serving, since 2008, as the deputy minister of health. During that time, he was the winner of a national Excellence through Evidence award from the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation.
During his tenure with the ministry of health, Florizone, the Hoshin Kanri process of strategic planning was adopted by the Saskatchewan health system. Now, it has been introduced into planning for education as well. It has been used most recently in the development of an education sector plan, into which Living Sky School Division director of eduction Randy Fox and his fellow directors had input during a four-day meeting with Florizone and other staff from the ministry in October.
Florizone's visit to the Battlefords took him to Grade 1 classrooms at Connaught and Battleford Central School, where he had a first hand look at student achievement initiatives being applied at the classroom level.
The previous week, Living Sky had a visit from assistant deputy minister Donna Johnson, who met with Fox and board chair Ken Arsenault and also attended a board of education meeting where she collected feedback from trustees on the new funding model for education.
In the ministry, Johnson, one of two assistant deputy ministers, is responsible for the funding distribution model as well as infrastructure and strategic policy.
With the new education funding distribution model now in its second year, Johnson said, "I am always wanting to do a bit of a temperature check as to how that is working for the school divisions and what your awareness is of what we're working on now and what we're going on to next."
A survey done a year after the new funding model was introduced brought up three areas that weren't working well, she said. They were supports for learning, transportation and locally determined benefits.
"We've heard all that," said Johnson.
As a result, she said, working groups have been formed with representatives from the school division, including superintendents of education for the supports for learning group and transportation representatives for the transportation groups, along with financial officers. In December, the provincial leadership team of the provinces directors of education and the deputy ministers of education will discuss the recommendations that have come out of those working groups.
Some time after that, Johnson expects to see some new components or formulas.
The third area of concern identified by the survey, locally determined benefits, will be looked at next fiscal year. The concern there, said Johnson, is that they are presently being funded at "actual" level, but they vary widely from division to division. Locally determined benefits are agreements made between divisions and staff regarding issues such as preparation time, leave and travel allowances. Commonly referred to as LINC agreements (Local Implementation and Negotiation Committee Agreement), they are negotiated by members of the teaching community, board of education and administration.
Johnson said school divisions, the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation and other groups will be consulted with a view to coming up with a solution that makes more sense.
One of the concerns Living Sky division has had since the funding model change is the end of a capital expense request system in favour of a funding vehicle called Preventative Maintenance and Renewal. The funds are based on the gross floor area of eligible operational facilities in the school division, and the division says the level available won't meet capital needs such as building an additional gym for Grade 7 and 8 students at North Battleford Comprehensive High School.
Board member Ronna Pethick told Johnson, "The current funding rate at $1.43 isn't sufficient to maintain our aging infrastructure. We are not in a position to build new schools, so we have to target a much higher rate to keep our facilities running as places of excellence where teachers can teach and students can learn."
Ron Kowalchuk echoed her concerns.
Johnson said the ministry recognizes that PMR funding isn't sufficient and they need to see what can be done to make more funds available.
Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Jim Shevchuk made the point that the current funding model doesn't recognize Canadian-born children of immigrants as EAL students (English as an addition language), when in fact they sometimes need even more supports than a newcomer student. He said its a new situation, brought about by the immigrants having children in Canada because it's their "ticket to freedom;" if they have Canadian children, they must be allowed to stay in the country.
First Nations students are another vulnerable group, said Shevchuk. With these two groups needing extra support, perhaps extra funding should be available to divisions like Living Sky, he suggested.
Fox said, "If it means taking money from a place that doesn't have the same level of challenges, then take the money and, quite frankly, put it where those challenges exist. My colleagues would say the same thing."
He added, "I agree there's only so much money in the pot and if you can't find more money then you have to move it to where the needs are."
Arsenault also addressed the need for extra support. He said the division is putting $500,000 into four school in the Battlefords, former community schools, because the needs of those school are not met in the funding model. But, he said, Johnson recognizes that the funding model could be more attuned to those needs.
"I think our message has been well received by Donna and we appreciate that," said Arsenault.
Johnson said she sees making data based decision will be important when determining funding.
"Supports for learning is an area where I get really interested in data," she said. "Our challenge is to find that unbiased data set, whatever that might be, that we can use to allocate the money to school divisions so that the money gets to where it needs to be."
When it comes to the funding formula, Johnson said, it's unlikely the ministry will ever be at a spot where it can say, "we're done now, it's perfect."
It's going to be something they work on every year too, looking at results and at what can be done better, said Johnson.
