Students at different grade levels in the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division are making progress in areas like reading and being prepared for entering elementary school, trustees heard Wednesday at the monthly board meeting.
The trustees were taken on a “wall walk” where they looked at data which tracks the progress made in a variety of areas, including financial efficiencies.
One of the areas was literacy, with a focus on reading skills, explained Terry Jordens, superintendent of student assessments.
She noted Grade 2 students in Holy Family are doing fairly well in reading, with about 72 per cent at or above their grade level, with the goal by the end of the school year to be at 80 per cent.
In Grade 3, on the other hand, the students had need of extra support this year, and even provincially, the achievement level so far has “grown very little,” said Jordens.
The area of the readiness of kindergarten students to enter Grade 1 is being tracked, with the provincial goal by the end of this school year for 90 per cent of students to be ready to begin Grade 1.
In Holy Family, currently kindergarten students are 68 per cent ready, which is 10 per cent above the provincial average. Some of the things Holy Family is doing in response includes professional development, with Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers set to take part in a full-day workshop.
“The important thing is to catch the need early. We screen them in pre-K to make sure we’re catching them right away,” said Jordens.
Asked if the schools are getting support from the teachers at this level, Jordens replied, “In the early years, yeah. There are activities for the parents to do with their kids at home.”
The next assessment for this subject will be done in April to gauge how the students are progressing.
A separate area that is being monitored is the progress of First Nations and Metis students. Jordens noted that Holy Family has 19 students who have self-declared as either First Nations or Metis, although she noted there are others who have simply not self-declared for whatever reason. Of the 19 students, 10 are Metis, six are status First Nations and three are non-status First Nations, with most of these students attending St. Michael School in Grades 1-9. “Our goal is to make our schools more culturally responsive,” said Jordens.
In the area of literacy and reading, 53 per cent of them were at their grade level for reading last June, and halfway through this school year, 33 per cent of the students are at the target level.
A number of the students have been improving well since the start of the year, some significantly, said Jordens, adding, “We’ve had a lot of support of struggling readers this year.”
Holy Family’s education spending for 2015-16 was comparable to larger school divisions, in an analysis carried out by the Ministry of Education, with comparisons made to the provincial average on education spending, and to other individual school boards.
As the board of trustees were told, Holy Family is the smallest of the province’s 28 boards, with an enrolment in that school year of 1,281 students.
Holy Family’s enrolment increased by 11 per cent in that school year from the 2013-14 school year, as did their spending, while provincially enrolment and spending both grew by three per cent.
In breakdown of education spending, expenses were categorized as administration, non-salary administration instruction, non-salary instruction, teacher substitutes and transportation, along with the utility cost on a square metre basis.
Holy Family’s administrative costs were nine per cent of total spending, compared to four per cent provincially, and non-salary administration costs were 23 per cent compared to 14 per cent provincially.
The board was told the major reason is that this includes Holy Family’s cost to rent their board office at the former St. Dominic School building plus software costs.
Instruction costs were 77 per cent of total spending in Holy Family, similar to the provincial average of 78 per cent, non-salary instruction was seven per cent, teacher subs were five per cent and transportation costs were three per cent of total spending. Holy Family’s utility cost per square metre was $15, which is the same as the provincial average.
One of the factors in the spending differences to other school boards is due to the small size of Holy Family compared to other boards.
“We’ll see if they pay any attention to this when we get our budget,” said education director Gwen Keith. The provincial budget, which will provide the dollars to every school division for the coming year, will be announced on Wednesday, March 22, when the “transformational change” policy for school boards will also be announced.
