Enrollment is up across Golden Hills

Times Reporter   

 

Golden Hills School Division (GHSD) is always working hard to ensure each and every new school year will be just as great, if not better, than the last. 

Across the division there are approximately 30 new staff members, which is due to retirements and positions that have come up.  There has also been an increase of enrollment. With just a couple of exceptions in a couple of schools it looks like enrollment is above predictions almost everywhere.

“We’re pretty excited, our enrollment is up overall in Golden Hills. So we’re pretty excited to welcome a lot of new kids into classrooms across out district,” said Daverne. 

When GHSD had looked at the fact the Grade 1 students would move on to Grade 2 and so on, the numbers added up to a 2.5 per cent to three per cent decline in enrollment. Instead, the division actually had a one per cent increase which is quite a bit above their projection.  

“We’ve made a number of changes in the last few years. We want to be more responsive to parents, we want to have better and be enhancing our programming at the school level. More student focus, so I think a lot of that work that has been ongoing over the last few years I think we’re seeing some dividends from that,” said Daverne about the possible reason for the increase. 

In previous years GHSD schools had participated in the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI). The government is no longer funding it but Daverne said GHSD is still moving forward with system improvements.  

“What started with AISI on a provincial landscape is still very much a focus for us within Golden Hills at all of our schools so we want to continue the work that we started,” said Daverne. 

Since AISI first started, it has morphed and changed over the years. At GHSD the focus they have had for the past number of years has been on learning, the collaborative connected creative approach to teaching the students so they have those skills to be very successful in the world.

The division will also continue to use outcomes-based assessments for report cards. 

“We’re not where we want to be yet with that but we want to continue to work with our teachers staff and our parents until we have a final product that everyone feels good about,” said Daverne. 

There has been good feedback about outcomes-based assessment in the past. but this new report card program also has some challenges with it that GHSD is working on. 

Back in the day you showed up to class, had to memorize what the teacher gave you and then fill out the answers on a test. That is not the kind of employee that people want these days. Daverne said employers are looking for creative people, problem solvers that can collaborate with others. 

“The old system of me memorize and knowing basically what you’re going to ask me before I get to the test, that’s all gone. Now we need a system where we are teaching kids and assessing them on their ability to collaborate and to problem solve and to think creatively and to be able to connect with others and to be able to use technology in creative ways,” said Daverne. 

“That’s the new way of teaching and we have spent a huge amount of time changing instruction so we do a better job of those things. It’s reflected in our achievement results as well, our results have gone up, every year virtually for the past decade. So we’re seeing very good results within our students, but it means that we need to assess them differently now too.”

Telling kids or their parents that they are doing pretty good and ‘I’ll give you a 65’ just doesn’t work anymore. People want to know why they are doing good or bad and how they can work on continuing to improve upon those skills.  

“We give specific feedback on specific learner outcomes and parents prefer it because it’s more information. We still have other things that we say too, but a letter grade is less important than that information,” said Daverne. 

Earlier this year the Alberta government announced the approval of funding for the new East Wheatland K-12 School. An application has been filed with the county for re-designation of 12 acres of land southeast of the intersection of highways 561 and 840. 

In the meantime, in Three Hills GHSD is working on doing a lot of pre-work before getting into design and modernization of the Prairie Christian Academy facility and turning it into K-12.