Education
It’s back to school for 11,000 students and 1,500 staff at Red Deer Public
Red Deer Public Schools is ready and excited to welcome 11,000 students back to the classroom on Wednesday, August 31! Staff have been busy preparing their classrooms and schools since Thursday, August 25. It’s going to be a great year full of teaching, learning and inspiring students.
“We want to ensure all students in Red Deer Public have a great school year, and are able to achieve their very best,” said Chad Erickson, Superintendent. “The last two years have been a challenging way to start as Superintendent for Red Deer Public. Looking ahead to this year I want to move forward. I want to engage with and connect with our staff, students, parents and community, and sharing a vision and aspirations for students and staff will play a big role in that. Red Deer Public Schools is the best choice for all students and we will continue focusing on that and improving where we can by working together.”
That connection began last Friday, August 26, when all 1,500 Red Deer Public Schools staff took part in the Division’s Kick Off event, held at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School. It was a morning of connection, inspiration and motivation as staff heard addresses from Superintendent Chad Erickson and Board Chair Nicole Buchanan. Themes included the importance of building relationships, having optimism, and believing in yourself.
BEST CHOICE
It’s an exciting time of year as school hallways will soon be buzzing with activity. In addition to seeing the faces of new students, Red Deer Public welcomes 30 new staff for the 2022/2023 school year. One focus area for the Division includes ensuring Red Deer Public is the BEST CHOICE by offering enhanced programming and meeting the needs and interest of students and families. This will be done through work by the Board of Trustees and community engagement this school year.
Red Deer Public will offer its newest choice to families this year….The Sports Academy. More than 300 students are enrolled in the Academy. In partnership with The Dome Red Deer, sports offered include:
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Baseball/Softball
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Soccer
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Hockey
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Sportfit (multi-sport opportunity)
“Our Sports Academy is one of many choices we look forward to offering our students and families. We want to ensure Red Deer Public Schools is the best choice for your children. They are going to get excellence in teaching and learning, with opportunities that will ensure they are well prepared for their future,” said Nicole Buchanan, Board Chair. “We offer a number of choices already that help students reach their full potential, and our Board is excited to offer this new program of choice.”
CURRICULUM
The start of the new school year also means a new curriculum for students in Kindergarten to Grade 3. Over the last six months, the Division’s Learning Services Coordinators, along with K-3 teachers have been actively reviewing the new curriculum to ensure they are prepared for a successful implementation as our top priority is excellence in teaching and learning in every classroom.
“When Kindergarten to Grade 3 students arrive in our classrooms for their first day of school tomorrow, they will be learning a new curriculum with excellent, engaging lessons as they always have in Red Deer Public,” said Erickson.
Meanwhile, Buchanan added Red Deer Public is looking forward to a year full of excellence in teaching and learning in every classroom.
“As we start the year, our Division and our priorities, which include Literacy and Numeracy, Equity, and Student Success and Completion, continue to be at the foundation of what we do and these have resulted in significant success,” she said. “Given the last 30 months, these priorities are even more vital as we begin this year. These priorities drive our day to day work and ensure that all students have the opportunity to reach their full potential.”
Better data, better outcomes for Alberta students |
To help schools address classroom complexity, Alberta’s government will begin collecting annual data on class size and composition.
Over the past three years, Alberta has welcomed more than 80,000 new students. With this unprecedented growth, classroom complexity and class sizes are among the biggest issues facing schools and teachers across the province.
To meet this challenge head on, Alberta’s government will work with school boards to gather yearly data on class sizes and composition. This information will be used to better understand staffing, student needs and classroom complexity. School boards will be required to submit data on Alberta classrooms by Nov. 24, and by January, this data will be made publicly available and will then be released annually.
Data collected on classroom complexity will help the province understand and address issues in schools, including class sizes, and support strategic investments in classrooms. Over the next three years, school boards will be provided with funding to hire 3,000 teachers and 1,500 new education assistants to support students with complex needs.
“We are ready to work with school boards and teachers to address classroom complexity and class sizes. We have heard them loud and clear and we are taking bold action to address these issues.”
Alberta’s government is establishing a Class Size and Complexity Task Force to begin work immediately on identifying solutions to the challenges facing Alberta classrooms. Alongside new annual data collection, the task force will ensure every student gets the attention and support they need to succeed. Details about the task force will be shared in the coming weeks.
“This data will provide essential insight into classroom realities, guiding evidence-based decisions and advocating for sustainable funding to address complexity, ensuring every student and educator in Alberta has the support to thrive.”
Quick facts
To inform decisions on addressing classroom complexity, data will be collected on total numbers of:
- all staff, per school, including roles
- substitute teachers
- district staff, listed by job title
- students, per classroom, per school
- severe, mild/moderate, and gifted/talented students, per classroom, per school
- English as an additional language (EAL) students, per classroom, per school
- refugee students, per classroom, per school
- First Nations, Métis and Inuit students, per classroom, per school
- Individualized Program Plans, per classroom, per school
- students waitlisted for assessment, per classroom, per school
- incidents of aggression and violence
- $55 million was provided in Budget 2025 to address classroom complexity.
- 8.6 billion is being invested to build and renovate more than 130 schools across the province.
- Budget 2025 is investing $1.6 billion in learning support funding to help meet students’ specialized learning needs.
- Budget 2025 is investing $1.1 billion to hire more than 4,000 teachers and educational staff.
Alberta
How one major media torqued its coverage – in the take no prisoners words of a former Alberta premier
(Editor’s note: I was going to write on the media’s handling of the Alberta government’s decision to order striking teachers back to work and invoke Section 33 of the Charter in doing so. But former Alberta premier Jason Kenney provided such a fulsome dissection of an absence of balance and its consequences in terms of public trust on X that I asked him if The Rewrite could publish it. He said yes and here it is – Peter Menzies.)
By Jason Kenney
This
”story” is an object lesson for why trust in legacy media has plummeted, and alt right media audiences have grown.
Here CTV “digital news producer” @AngeMAmato (she/her) writes a story about “experts” calling the use of Sec. 33 “a threat to democracy.”
Who are the experts?
A left wing academic, and a left wing activist. The latter, Howard Sapers, is a former Liberal MLA (which the article does not mention) for a party that is so marginal, it has not elected an MLA in over a decade.
For good measure CTV goes on to quote two left wing union bosses, who of course are predictably outraged.
A more accurate headline would be “Four people on the left angry about use of Notwithstanding Clause.” Which is the opposite of news. It’s the ultimate “Dog Bites Man” non-story.
Did the CTV producer make any effort to post a balanced story by asking for comment from academics / lawyers / think tanks who support use of Sec. 33? Did she call the @CDNConstFound or the @MLInstitute’s Judicial Power Project? Did she attempt to reach any of these four scholars, who just published their views in a @nationalpost op-ed last week?
Did she have an editor who asked why her story lacked any attempt at balance?
And did anyone at CTV pause for a moment to ponder how tendentious it is to accuse a democratically elected legislature of acting “undemocratically” by invoking a power whose entire purpose is to ensure democratic accountability?
She provides some historical context about prior use of Sec. 33. Why does that context not include the fact that most democratically elected provincial governments (including Alberta under Premier Lougheed, and Saskatchewan under NDP Premier Blakeney) agreed to adopt the Charter *only if* it included the Notwithstanding Clause to allow democratically elected Legislatures to ensure a democratic check and balance against the abuse of undemocratic, unaccountable judicial power?
Why does she not mention that for the first 33 years of the Charter era, the Canadian Courts ruled that there was no constitutionally protected right to strike?
Why doesn’t she quote an expert pointing out that Allan Blakeney defended the Saskatchewan Legislature’s 1986 use of Sec. 33 to end a strike as “a legitimate use of the Clause?” Or refer to Peter Lougheed’s 1987 commitment to use Sec. 33 if the courts invented a right to strike?
Many thoughtful criticisms can be levelled against Section 33. Being undemocratic is not one of them.
So why do we see so much agitprop like this masquerading as news from so many legacy media outlets?
IMO, there are two possible answers:
1) They are blind to their own biases; and / or
2) People like @AngeMAmato believe that they have a moral imperative to be “progressive journalists” which trumps the boringly old fashioned professional imperative to be objective and balanced.
Whatever the reason, “journalists” like this have no one to blame but themselves for growing distrust of legacy media, and the consequent emergence of non traditional media platforms.
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