New school board budget supports deeper learning
The Lester B. Pearson School Board has adopted a $306.3 million budget for the 2018-2019 academic year and advancing deeper learning initiatives is one of the priorities for the coming year.
Deeper learning develops what are called the six “Cs” — character, creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration and citizenship. To that end, the board is spending $1 million on IT training for teachers and IT resource upgrades.
School board assistant director general Carol Heffernan used the shifting approach to library use as an example of deeper learning.
“Deeper learning changes the way we look at the library setting,” she said. “A school library is no longer a place where you only go to sit and read. More and more they are becoming meeting places. We call them ‘maker spaces.’”
Programs that help students who are struggling with reading and math skills will return in the fall. Partir du bon pied enters its second year, financed by a $2 million grant. A technician visits each school, one day a week, and works with kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2 students who need help with reading. This year, the technician’s time spent at a school will better reflect the number of students requiring help.
The Coup de Pouce program received an additional $700,000 in funding. The program helps students in Grade 2 through Grade 6 who are struggling with their studies. And a new program — called Accroche toi — will be introduced at adult learning and vocational centres, with the help of a $400,000 grant.
“These schools don’t have guidance councillors,” Heffernan said. “It’s important to finish your studies, but it’s also important to become a functioning member of the economy. It makes sense for us to offer support to help them succeed.”
The budget has flagged $30 million in capital investments for upgrades at 30 schools.
Among the projects, Sherbrooke Junior, Springdale Elementary and St-Thomas High School all get new bathrooms, and Dorval Elementary gets $2 million in upgrades to classrooms. The work will be done during the summer of 2019.
And the budget earmarks $100,000 to fund efforts to support diversity. The money will help fund professional development for teachers and pay for materials that will be used to create safe and inclusive environments in schools. Not all the news was good. The board was once again hit with a negative adjustment by the Minstère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur — to the tune of $10.1 million.
“It’s been happening for the last 20 years,” Heffernan said. “The operational budget is calculated then the (ministry) doesn’t have enough money, so for us to arrive at a balanced budget, we have to go through the whole budget again and cut this and cut that. We can’t make cuts to our energy budget or to our snow removal budget, so it becomes quite the juggling act.”