It is a required duty that the South East Cornerstone Public School Division’s board members accepted on Oct. 14, when they officially placed Pangman and Wapella Schools under the review process.
Since these two schools met the review criteria insofar as their enrolment numbers and other factors have diminished during the past few years, it was incumbent on the trustees to begin the review process, said co-chairwoman Carol Flynn who was directing the formal portion of the meeting while chairwoman Audrey Trombley joined the board via a media hookup.
Each school will now have a review committee appointed to it comprised of up to four members of the current School Community Councils, two members of the town or village council and two representatives of the council or municipalities in the school division. The school community council members cannot be teachers or school principals.
In making the motion for review, Estevan-based trustee Janet Foord said the criteria has been well established since 1995, and she and Flynn reminded the other trustees that this was just the start of the review process.
Trustee Kevin Keating pointed out the review could lead to one of three conclusions: one being the closure of the school within a year, second, a discontinuance of some grades within the school, or, third, no action being taken at all.
Pangman School, a kindergarten to Grade 12 school currently houses about 70 students which is lower than the base enrolment figures considered to be viable by the provincial government. Wapella School is a kindergarten to Grade 9 school with an enrolment of about 49 or 50 students.
Flynn said the board had spent a great deal of time discussing the possibility of the reviews before the motion hit the floor.
“We have a lot more data to look at now then we had even a few years ago,” said Foord. “And there has been little or no change in the numbers; and in fact, they are lower than before and this affects all schools in the division where we have to channel finances and resources.”
Elwood White, admitting that he entered the process with some prejudice since he has a child enrolled in the Pangman School, said he would vote against the motion to conduct a review. He was joined by Weyburn trustee Ed Pretzer in casting the two votes against the motion. “I understand the cost factors, but I feel these schools are doing a good job of educating the kids right where they are,” White said.
Estevan trustee Pam Currie said she felt it was the board’s responsibility to look seriously at the situation once the numbers fall below the provincially established parameters. “The fact is, it’s policy and projected enrolments, plus increasing costs for education delivery, transportation considerations … we don’t take it lightly, but we must carry out some due diligence here.”
“We will go through the process in compliance with legislation,” said Trombley.
Trustee Harold Laich who represents schools in the northeast sector of the public school division, which includes Wapella, said it was incumbent on the trustees to “make it clear to the communities as to why these schools are under review.”
“We know it affects families, schools, the feeder systems, but we have to do it,” said Foord.
In other less contentious issues at the board table, the trustees listened to a musical presentation by the Weyburn Comprehensive School Choir and from the school’s award-winning Entrepreneurship 30 class that captured a couple of national awards.
Consultants Tracey Kiliwnik and Cheryl Anderson delivered information on the student success process and the delivery of some Lean efficiencies to the process under the direction of the division’s financial and business management officer Shelley Toth. “There were some frustrations at first,” said Kiliwnik, referring to the three-day session, but the program that focused on support systems for schools eventually drew some positive feedback from participants.
There is now a new flow chart for student success projects and educators are getting the right paperwork at the right time.
Early reports indicate that with intervention needs being sighted at the entry-level stage, more students, including First Nations students, are reaping greater success rates.
The two consultants said the goal is to have 90 per cent of the youngest students being at a readiness level for language for Grade 1 and that they were currently at 89 per cent. Students who were coming up a bit short of the desired level will be reassessed in June.
On the mathematics scales, there is now more data to pull out, they said, and it showed there was more work to be done right up to the Grade 12 level, but improvements had been made and recorded with about 80 per cent of the students between Grades 1 and 9 now meeting acceptable standards and 75 per cent of the Grades 10 to 12 students hitting the acceptable zones. Anderson said there were still no provincial assessments to compare with Cornerstone’s self-generated data, at this time.
