Board Column: Assurance Plan Engagement

Planning is important in education, and listening to those who a plan most directly impacts is crucial. 

This is the essence of the living, and ever evolving document that makes up our Wolf Creek Public Schools’ Assurance Plan. We are in the first year of a four year divisional plan, and since January we have been reaching out to parents, teachers, staff and students. We are currently listening to those in our communities through stakeholder consultations, as we create plans for the future of Wolf Creek Public Schools. In these discussions, we look at our current plan to get a sense of what we are doing well and areas in which we can improve. 

In our Assurance Plan, there are three main areas of focus: Quality Teaching, Supporting ALL Students, and Collective Responsibility. 

In terms of quality teaching, there are numerous areas to ensure we are meeting this measure, including mentorship for new teachers and new school administrators. School administrators also engage in regular classroom walkthroughs to enhance supervision of teachers and support staff. And, we continue to enhance direct involvement of parents, guardians and students in programming for students with diverse learning needs. 

We are supporting students through a great number of ways. Universal breakfast programs and targeted nutrition programs are in all Wolf Creek schools. School social workers offer a variety of individual, group and classroom programs in all our schools targeted at building social skills, self-regulation, relationship building and resilience. For older students, career-based high school programming such as Dual Credit, Registered Apprenticeship Programming (RAP), and Work Experience serve to enhance high school educational needs and expose students to post secondary opportunities. Additionally, we continue to strengthen instructional leadership and practices to lead learning related to First Nations, Métis and Inuit foundational knowledge and its application within classrooms and the larger school community. 

Collective responsibility is about outreach and coming together as an entire school community. This is where we’re stronger by working together, and much of this is achieved through our commitment to communication and transparency with families and staff, as well as the very feedback gathered through recent and ongoing sessions with parents, staff, teachers, students and administrators. 

These are some successes and of course there is continued room for improvement and room to analyze the effectiveness of each strategy. In setting the direction in such a plan, we ensure that it is: aligned with provincial, division and community priorities, incorporates stakeholder input, budgets resources to achieve goals and improve results, implements strategies to maintain or improve student learning and achievement, monitors and adjusts as needed, analyses and reports results, identifies and strategies for future planning and communicates with stakeholders. 

We have a timeline for the update of the Assurance Plan and, as mentioned, we are currently in the Community Partner engagement stage. Through this we analyze evidence, report and refine priorities for the following school year. We submit the updated plan to Alberta Education at the end of May. 

The current plan is posted on our website at www.wolfcreek.ab.ca.

Luci Henry, is the Board Chair for Wolf Creek Public Schools. Wolf Creek Public Schools Board is served by Trustees representing the communities and rural areas of Alix, Bentley, Blackfalds, Bluffton, Clive, Eckville, Lacombe, Ponoka, and Rimbey. Serving approximately 7,300 students, from Kindergarten to Grade 12, WCPS employs approximately 412 teachers and 350 support staff in 30 schools, including five colony schools, throughout the Division.