PRINCE ALBERT —The Prince Albert Catholic School Division has approved their new three-year Strategic Plan during their regular meeting on Monday.
The three-year plan was passed at the same time as the division’s budget and after over a year of work and feedback in the division.
Director of Education Lorel Trumier said that they passed the two items in the same meeting because they needed to have a budget passed to fund the plan itself.
The Strategic Plan covers the years 2023-2026 and will officially come into effect at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year.
“I need to make sure that the board understands and wants what we've derived as the best strategic direction of our school division and I wanted to make sure that that's where that's heading,” Trumier explained.
The provincial education plan is still under development, but Trumier doesn’t expect major differences between that plan and the Prince Albert Catholic School Division one.
“It's aligned with the provincial education plan in terms of the priority areas of the province,” she explained. “What falls in behind that, of course, is we have got to fund the plan and it's increasingly more difficult to fund our strategic plan and the provincial plan.”
One example of where the plan aligns with the still-to-be-completed provincial plan is mental health and wellbeing, which the province does not appear to be supporting.
“There’s very little resources that are being submitted in budgets for that plan and we're concerned about that. But the little that we can do, we will. And we'll do our best to do well for our children. So, I think that's a prime example of where what we set out in our strategic plan will move forward because we've put some resources behind it,” Trumier said.
Trumier added that she is excited about the plan and the good work that went into creating it.
“We've found some strategic ways to do that that won't cost us more money,” she said. “We are doing things to understand the learning journey of children better as it relates to the different areas that we've set out.”.
The cover of the plan was designed by Prince Albert artist Leah Dorion. The tree she designed is a symbolic representation of what the plan tries to do.
“We are looking for growth and of course, she equated it to the Giving Tree that she's painted and has set out for us. We said there are there's the core of our work, which is understanding our faith, a journey through the work that we do,” Trumier explained.
From that growth comes opportunities to look at how we learn and how we can have academic achievement and social-emotional growth through the next three years, he said.
The transitions that Trumier discussed were moving between grades and finishing high school and going forward into work life.
“We're looking at some work in those areas as well as inspiring success for all of our students, including our indigenous students, and Metis students in our school division,” Trumier said.
The plan was built through feedback from staff and SCCs and aligned to the new provincial plan.
“It’s exciting that like we're excited about our new strategic plan and it came from our staff, so very grassroots oriented about what do Grade 1 teachers want to work on? What do the Grade 5 teachers want to work on? And how do we get better at what we're doing and how do we help our children through their journeys through these aspects,” Trumier said.
“We’re really excited. It's a significant amount of work that we've set out in the next three years, but we're focused and ready to go and we're ready to launch this in the fall,” she added.
