(Cam Lee/northeastNOW Staff)

By Cam Lee

NESD

Highlights, challenges in North East School Division in 2019 and beyond

Dec 18, 2019 | 5:00 PM

We take a look back at 2019 and a look ahead to 2020 and beyond with North East School Division (NESD) Director of Education Don Rempel.

Rempel told northeastNOW there were a number of successes in the past year, including a research project conducted in Carrot River High School by First Nations/Métis education consultant Sharon Meyer, and Dr. Glen Aikenhead of the University of Saskatchewan.

Rempel said the project produced research around how to bring Indigenous ways of knowing into the math classroom.

“That has been shared provincially and it’s getting a lot of interest as far as how to change instructional practices to better recognize Indigenous ways of knowing,” Rempel said.

Another highlight for him was the small school sustainability process the division went through with the help of the Saskatchewan Education Leadership Unit. The process looked at sustainable ways to deliver programming in smaller schools, in partnership with school communities.

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“This allows us to use the available funding to support small schools in a sustainable way, and then… to find an innovative delivery of education for those schools,” Rempel said.

Budget sustainability is a significant issue for NESD, as they are currently using their accumulated surplus to balance their budget.

Rempel said they have undergone tendering for replacement of all school lights in the division to LED lighting.

The tender is around $1 million, though Rempel said the project should pay for itself in energy savings in about six years. The lighting is expected to improve efficiency by about 50 per cent.

Rempel said the division is looking at expenditures in all areas of operation through an enterprise risk management process. The process will look at what the priorities of the school board are, and how best to meet those priorities considering the fiscal constraints.

“We’re hoping to reduce our operating costs by about $1.8 million in the next school year,” Rempel said.

The general trend of declining enrolment in the northeast continues.

“We’re currently doing our projections for the [2020-2021] school year, anticipating [a] reduction in [the number] of students as well,” he said.

That bucks the trend in much of the province, especially larger urban areas that are seeing higher student numbers.

Rempel said schools in the division have been working on the concept of ‘visible learning’ to see learning through the eyes of the students. Teachers are being assisted in accessing global research of what works best to improve student learning.

“We’ve got a new model for school improvement planning which involves a lot of training for all of our teaching staff in the North East School Division schools,” Rempel said.

The process will take three years, and Rempel hopes to see great returns in student achievement results.

Meanwhile, the long-time administrator announced earlier this year that he is planning to retire after the 2020-2021 school year.

Rempel has been director of education for NESD since August of 2009.

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cam.lee@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @camlee1974