The Cowichan Valley School District has seen a flurry of activity over the summer months to accommodate the Supreme Court decision around class size and composition.
Superintendent, Rod Allen says they’ve managed to fill 60 teacher positions and are working on the teacher-on-call list but there was an interesting twist to the staffing issue…..
As far as classrooms, Allen says the District managed to use existing spaces….
The Nanaimo/Ladysmith School District has hired 103 teachers for the new school season in order to comply with the Supreme Court decision on class size and composition.
Tim Davie, Assistant Superintendent and project lead on the issue, says there are still some positions to fill with regards to teacher-on-call positions and specialist positions but they are working on those.
As for the spaces required for the new classrooms, Davie says, the District needed 54 additional classrooms and most of those are in place now…..
He says most of the new classroom spaces were found in existing schools, but some portables have been brought in.
The province has released some statistics with regards to the upcoming school year.
There’s an increase in enrolment, province-wide of just over 4,200 students and a total of 537,589 students are enrolled in the public system.
The province spends 9,100 dollars per student.
Based on the student head-count in the 2016-17 school year, there were almost 67,000 students with special needs in the province, about 2,200 more than the year before.
At just over 69,000, there are almost 1,300 fewer Aboriginal students enrolled.
There are almost 84,000 students in independent schools, 1,800 more than the year before.
