Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) has an extra $736,000 in their coffers, after a successful Classroom Improvement Fund (CIF) application through Alberta Education.
With their students' education in the forefront of their minds, NLPS created a committee of 10-members, including teaching staff, trustees, and senior administration to decide where the funding would be allocated.
In their application, they determined the money would be best used for additional certified staff to address areas of need, including assisting small rural schools with multi-level grade classrooms, and hiring additional non-teaching support staff to address school needs.
The CIF was created through collaboration between the Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) and the Teachers Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA).
“I think the most exciting thing for us, was the significant and sincere collaboration between the local teachers' association and the board system to determine how we would best be able to use those dollars to serve our children,” said Arlene Hrynyk, NLPS board chair.
“We polled the local membership soon after the announcement about CIF was made,” said David Ripkens, president of the ATA Local 15 in a press release.
“Teachers made it clear that kids should have equal opportunity to benefit from classroom improvement funds. For some, that now means more teachers in their school; for others, it means literacy or technology resources at their fingertips.”
It was the collaboration of the ATA and TEBA that made it possible.
“Being granted CIF money was not a foregone conclusion, the collaborative relationship between the ATA local and the school board created the conditions to make it happen. Kids get to reap the rewards. This is a textbook win-win.”
For NLPS, the funding will help support the hiring of an assessment consultant, who will work on a variety of assessment-related projects, including the common assessments for middle school levels.
“Some dollars will be used to add staff to reduce some multi-grade levels, there's another component of it that will be used to bring on board an assessment consultant for the specialized services that were identified as integral and required. The other piece is support staff. We always know that we have growing needs in our classrooms, and we want to ensure that we are able to best meet each child's needs,” Hrynyk said.
The funding means students will be receiving quality education with the supports that they need in order to succeed, she continued.
“We are trying to teach our children the way they learn. In rural parts of the province, we don't always have services, we know there are challenges, and I think it's extremely important that we have these opportunities through government grants to try and realize those needs in a better way.”
The funding will be spread across the system, with each school receiving dollars to purchase resources, materials, and technology to improve their classrooms.
The focus will be on providing materials and resources in areas such as First Nations, Métis, and Inuit resources.
“Those are areas that are identified as key priorities within our own strategic planning, in conjunction with the direction of the Government of Alberta. We are always trying to ensure that we are teaching our children based on what we have identified to be priority areas, as well as modeling what the government wants us to be teaching our students,” Hrynyk explained. “We're always looking at what we need to be teaching our children, what their needs are within the system, collaborating with our partners is the most important piece for us, and trying to make those minimal dollars stretch.”
