SD 74 meeting the challenges
Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal
October 12, 2009
By: Pat Pearce, Superintendent, SD 74 (Gold Trail)

Dear Editor:

September 30 is the critical day that school districts count the number of children that have registered for school each year. In Gold Trail the head count reflects the demographic shift that is occurring in our communities, in our province and also in our country. There are simply less children and so our enrolment numbers are down again this year in Gold Trail. Our Board of Education has paid attention to the number of children coming into Kindergarten each year and the number of children completing school and we can predict that this situation is bound to continue over the next five years.

In this school year we have 88 children entering Kindergarten and 126 students completing Grade 12 by June. This same trend continues with 30 less students in 2011 and 67 less in 2012. These numbers only reflect the difference between a head count in Kindergarten and Grade 12.

That’s the bad news. The most critical part of this situation however, is how to continue to meet the needs of all of our learners even though our numbers and our revenue have decreased.

Gold Trail school district is taking bold action toward improved achievement even in a climate of decreasing enrolment. We have increased support for students in the last few years, and have focused our attention on the learning agenda. There is recognition that the early years in education are critical for driving success throughout the K-12 system. The district has opened StrongStart centers in three communities to encourage language and social skill development in our pre-school children. We are on our sixth year of

All Day Kindergarten for every child in the district and we have adopted a universal Kindergarten screening program to help us focus our attention on students who have specific needs in their speech and language development that might affect their school success….

In Gold Trail we believe that Effective Schools are made up of many Effective Classrooms. Effective classrooms have quality instruction and resources in place to support the learning. As a system we’re striving to support all of our classrooms to be effective places for learning and we’re adopting the attitude that it’s quality, not size, that matters.