How do Alberta’s high schools stack up in the annual Fraser rankings?
City high schools generally have more students and bigger budgets than their country counterparts. For school boards that can mean more field trips, more extracurricular activities and more in-class amenities. So how are some rural schools beating out urb
Just off the Crowsnest Highway about five minutes northwest of Leth bridge lies the very worst of what Palliser school division once was, and the very the best of what it has become.
Eight years ago, there was a 30 per cent failure rate on Grade 12 diploma exams at the small town Coalhurst high school. Nearly one-third of students were unlikely to complete high school on time.
It highlighted an ever spiralling problem: the funding dedicated to Coalhurst was tied to enrolment, but with poor scores pushing students away, the money needed to improve left with them.
“I was at some of those struggling schools and it was awful,” said Sterling Paiha, a former vice-principal at Coalhurst. “It was awful for the kids.
“It just created a real bitter sort of atmosphere in some of those schools where we just felt that we were hanging on with our fingernails and that we could be gone at any time.”
Today, things have changed dramatically at Coalhurst, with its student body of 164 in grades 7 to 12, thanks to something of a small revolution in how the Palliser division and its schools operate.
Coalhurst is now one of the better performing high schools in all of Alberta, according to rankings compiled by the Fraser Institute using 2011 diploma exam results and other data.
Just five years ago Coalhurst was among the bottom 10 per cent in the province. Now, it is among the top 10 per cent, scoring 24th out of 276 high schools.
The turnaround is apparent enough that current vice-principal Shannon Collier says students who once left are now trying to return.
That school is not alone in attracting attention. Paiha is currently the principal at nearby Picture Butte High School, which ranks 16th overall and has maintained a steadily strong performance for almost a decade.
The school board in charge of both is the Palliser division, which borders Lethbridge, stretches north to Arrowwood and includes some Christian schools in Calgary. Six of seven Palliser high schools that qualify for the Fraser rankings are in the top 50.
School administrators, principals and teachers credit the schools’ top performance to a series of measures instituted in the last seven years.
First, the division stopped funding schools based on head count — the kind of formula that so damaged Coalhurst. Instead, it poured resources into those with problems, no matter the number of students.
Principals in the Palliser division are no longer saddled with endless administrative and budget duties. Much of that is now handled by central office, meaning principals are free to spend more time in the class and with teachers.
Gone is the competition between schools. They now share specialty teachers and equipment, and offer a far greater range of programs.
Class sizes are kept small. Despite declining student numbers (Picture Butte has just 215 students in grades 7 to 12), there is no talk of closing schools. In fact, three were recently opened to serve the German Mennonite population.
How students are graded has changed, with emphasis on a small number of tests and major assignments that really count, with homework and quizzes used as practice rather than report card scores. Students are also allowed to retake one test, if they did poorly the first time.
In Picture Butte, it’s not all been easy. The area is feedlot alley, the heart of the cattle industry, and when BSE hit in 2003 the population sagged as people moved away.
It’s also a place where families don’t always make a big income, although money is certainly flowing back into surrounding areas.
And students and staff have had to survive nearly three years of renovations on the school. That included a winter where work stalled when the construction company went under, leaving a lunch room open to the elements and a foyer with little heat.
“Despite that, and all the disruptions, we’ve been able to maintain our academic standing,” Paiha said. “It’s something that we’ve insisted on.”
Paiha is himself a graduate of Picture Butte High School (class of 1983). He worked in construction, in a bottle depot, as a janitor and other odd jobs before realizing, “I’ve got to get an education.” So he became a teacher. People feel close to their high school. So much so that as work crews are pulling up the 40-year-old gym floor in Picture Butte, they are saving pieces in anticipation that former students will want their own bit of history.
There’s enough interest in the centre court logo it will likely be auctioned off. It’s an attachment that extends to academics.
“It’s the community, it’s the climate of the school,” said Aaron Skretting a social studies teacher at Picture Butte. “We’ve got expectations for the kids and they, by and large, try to live up to them.”
Small is key, according to Palliser school superintendent Kevin Gietz, who spends his days visiting schools and almost no time in his office.
When a teen gets a haircut, staff notice. When a wayward student doesn’t show up for class, the school secretary knows and calls them at home.
Parents are telephoned any time there’s something wrong. Paiha said his next goal is to call every parent once a year to tell them something good about their child.
“We do believe in small schools,” Gietz said. “Are they efficient if you want to get right down to the money? No. But are they good for kids and good for the staff? Absolutely.”
By centralizing money decisions, the school division has stopped the practice of pitting school against school in a race to get more students.
Instead, by pooling resources, schools have been able to offer far more options than they could ever afford on their own.
The band teacher at Picture Butte also instructs at two other schools. This year the school added Outdoor Education (camping, Boy Scout type of skills and activities), choir and cos- metology.
The trades workshop at Coalhurst isn’t part of the building at all, but rather a nearly 1,000-square-foot tractor trailer that travels between high schools once a semester.
Lining one wall are welding stations, along another are carpentry tools, with saws and a lathe in the middle. A car can be driven up the ramp and right inside where there’s a hoist.
Parents were clamouring for just this kind of shop, but it’s something the school division could never have afforded to build at the small Coalhurst school.
The solution was a massive mobile classroom that could serve two or three schools instead of one.
It’s just one of several “options” the school division has managed to creatively engineer on tight budgets and small student numbers.
Collier, the vice-principal, teaches a sports medicine course. The school also offers a course in forensic science (just like on TV shows such as CSI).
In Career and Technology Studies they built a hovercraft. Next year they hope to stage a big drama production for the 100th anniversary of the town.
“In a small town, when we can offer a lot of those things to kids, then it keeps them busy and in the right direction,” Collier said. “That’s what I really feel that I’ve seen here at this school.”