By Greg Nikkel
The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division is ending the 2016-17 school year with a lot of uncertainty about the future, but notes there is a “bright spot” for the future with the development of “deeper learning” for the school division.
In an overview of the past school year, education director Gwen Keith outlined a number of concerns as they look at an uncertain future for school divisions in Saskatchewan, with four “transformational change” teams set up by the Ministry of Education examining different aspects of how education is governed and operated in the province.
She noted that as part of the committees work, there have been numerous surveys sent out by the Ministry, some of them taking a lot of work by central office staff as the request for information is very detailed.
“Probably the most intensive one is a survey on central office and board compensation. That had an extensive amount of data to input,” said Keith, noting that all of the data from all of the school divisions will be compiled as they look to develop the policies and rules for the future.
She noted there are uncertainties also with a continued expectation for school divisions to take a 3.5 percent wage cut, with a zero increase in the following three years, leading to an unsettled prospect for negotiations with teachers and unions like the SEIU in the coming year.
Keith also pointed out that it’s ironic that the team dealing with efficiency is being rather inefficient as they are duplicating work already being done using Lean principles.
In regard to the new Education Act, Keith is involved with the committee developing the regulations which will outline what powers school boards will or will not have, and this will impact on all levels of K-12 education in the province.
“The granular details of that is not being shared with the board chairs. Part of the complexity with this is we’re sworn to secrecy, so I can’t share the information with our board chair,” said Keith, adding that the board chairs are having meetings coming up on all the changes, but not much has come forward to them as of yet.
Board chair Bruno Tuchscherer spoke of the frustration of the process he’s been involved with on a Ministry committee, being tied up with lengthy conference calls.
“The last one we had was two hours long, as the meeting was in Regina. People who couldn’t attend were conferenced in. When we were on the phone, you couldn’t hear what was happening in the room, and people dropped out of the call because they didn’t know what was going on,” said Tuchscherer.
One concern that arose is that the province made a mistake in funding for international students, and had to claw back funds from school divisions around the province. This will mean a clawback of $19,000 from Holy Family’s budget, which had already been approved by the Ministry for 2017-18.
Two motions were asked of the board, which came from the Ministry, where they are asking the school divisions to go in on a province-wide fuel tender rather than each school division getting their own local fuel tenders, plus they want school boards to join with a common purchase card administered provincially.
As Tuchscherer observed, “they’re trying to push some of this stuff without the boards being involved. Maybe we have a good deal with who we’re buying fuel from now.”
As the board discussed this later, they brought up a concern that they use the Co-op as a bulk fuel supplier, partly because they get a rebate, and wondered if they could still get as good a deal going in with the provincial deal.
They voted in favour of going in with the provincial bulk fuel tender, with the condition that the cost cannot be higher than what they are able to obtain locally, and then in favour of going in with other school divisions for a purchase card that will be provincially administered.
In giving her report on this school year just wrapping up, the education director noted there is one “bright spot”, namely the Deeper Learning initiative, which is shaping up with technology upgrades being planned for, with a Deeper Learning lab to be set up at St. Michael School, which is proposed to include such features as a 3D printer and laser cutters.
Keith noted that that morning she met at St. Michael with staff and students, and watched a demonstration of programmed robots by students that very much impressed her. With the networking with other schools across Canada that are also into Deeper Learning, she noted that teachers here can submit their best work to the Canadian organization for adjudication, and the best work from there can in turn be adjudicated at the world level. In addition, there are five teachers from Holy Family who have volunteered to help adjudicate projects from schools across Canada, which they will be able to do online.
“The injection of technology is really very exciting,” said Keith, looking ahead to next year after talking to teachers about what technology they might be needing to go into the next school year.
