ATHABASCA — Communication was key in 2022 for Aspen View Public Schools (AVPS), said board chair Candy Nikipelo.
Nikipelo said between hearing parents, engaging with school councils, and taking time to talk to students, trustees gave and received a lot of information last year and she wants to keep that momentum going.
“The Council of School Councils … that’s where we bring, twice a year, all of our school councils within the school division together to have one big meeting,” she said. “It’s a chance for them to share amongst each other.”
Parent Voices and Student Voices were also two big programs.
“Parent Voices is very important, especially with curriculum roll-outs and different issues, even COVID issues,” said Nikipelo. “It was really important for us this last year to really communicate extra with the parents.”
Grade 9 students across the division sat down with their local trustee and gave input on a variety of things.
“We talked about the pandemic, we talked about how their mental health was and how they felt they got through the pandemic and kind of what their needs were, what they felt that they were maybe lacking within the schools, what we could do to help them more, that kind of thing,” she said. “Just looking for some input from their teenage perspective and that was really awesome.”
AVPS also made a presentation at the spring Public School Boards of Alberta (PSBA) conference, which was well received.
“Everybody thought it was such a great idea,” said Nikipelo. “We decided we want to follow up with those students when they are in Grade 12; go through the same process with them.”
And while the COVID-19 virus is still making the rounds, Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the provincial government are referring to it as a respiratory illness like influenza.
“We have not even really heard that word uttered too much from government at all about COVID in schools,” she said. "Although in the metros, they're still quite concerned about it, and they've been asking ... for a mask mandate to perhaps come back just because they were going through some trying times but, as far as our school division was concerned, we had one school and that was (H.A. Kostash in Smoky Lake) that had a respiratory outbreak for a few days declared by AHS, but that was our one off.”
Smoky Lake is also where a new school is on the precipice of being handed over to the division.
“By all accounts we’re supposed to be getting the keys near the end of March – it might not be till April/May because I know they are maybe a month or six weeks behind but that's OK because we're not going to open the school to students until the fall anyway,” said Nikipelo.
The other bright spot noted after the official count September 30, was an increase in enrolment across the division.
“We’ve always been a declining school division for many years and that was not anticipated,” she said. “We’re still trying to figure out where all the students came from, there’s no one trend. Yes, some did come back from homeschooling, but we have a number of families who just moved into the area for jobs so that’s a plus for all of our communities.”
Fourteen of the students who were enrolled by the official count date are from Ukraine and a few more enrolled after so will be counted in the next round.
Looking forward, Nikipelo is focused on the coming curriculum roll-out.
“It's such an overwhelming task, curriculum has been, but we are definitely doing our best to keep our teachers looked after and hopefully they're feeling the school division is definitely trying our best to keep up with the amount of information that keeps coming in for them,” said Nikipelo.
And an increase in mental health support for students and staff.
“One of the side effects of COVID is that it's definitely increased our need for mental health support,” she said. “Resources and the support are not always readily available; the access to therapists, especially out in rural Alberta is just not easy. That's always a challenge but we've forged ahead, and we just hope the government keeps monetary resources flowing into all the school divisions to help tackle that.”
One of the other things Nikipelo is pleased to see coming back is meeting with municipalities again.
“We have eight municipalities that we are part of, and we want to continue to partner with our municipalities,” said Nikipelo. “’Rural sustainability', I can't keep saying that term often enough, it's so important and it is just as important for our municipalities. I just see so much potential in partnering just to keep our voices strong.”
Nikipelo noted education and healthcare go hand in hand, and in a place like Boyle which is struggling to keep its healthcare centre open 24/7 it will eventually have a trickle effect.
“What are the two most important things in your community? Your hospital and your school, and if one of them is suffering and not where it should be, people are going to start exiting the community in a hurry,” she said. “One's going to affect the other so, it's our job to try to partner with our municipalities to help them where we can, and vice versa.”
