The New Westminster school district has laid out its plans for putting an inclusive education review into action.
Bruce Cunnings, the district’s director of instruction for learning services, provided an update on the ongoing multi-year process at the school board’s Oct. 27 meeting.
Throughout the 2019/20 school year, contracted consultants worked with a district advisory group on the review – holding focus groups, seeking public input through the ThoughtExchange crowdsourcing platform, holding one-on-one interviews and hosting meetings to gather input from staff, families and students. Their mission was to find out what’s working – and what’s not – for students with identified special needs and Indigenous students.
The process led to a report outlining 23 separate recommendations, which was presented to the board in June. Cunnings was then tasked with mapping out how to put those recommendations into action. He told trustees implementation will happen in three phases, beginning this school year and ending in 2022/23.
The first phase – which covers items being addressed in 2020/21 - focuses on a number of recommendations around training for staff, including creating a district committee that will help to develop a multi-year professional development plan for the district.
Cunnings noted some of the recommended training has already begun through Pro-D Day sessions and in-school training with principals, vice-principals and teachers.
Another key area of focus this year will revolve around improving communications and administrative procedures – such as creating an easy-to-read parent handbook and issuing an updated district manual on inclusive practices for all schools.
Cunnings said one change that will be reflected in the handbook stems from feedback from educational assistants (EAs), and that is the importance of having EAs present at school-based team meetings when the students they support are being discussed.
The budget for the first phase of the work, happening throughout the current school year, is set at $8,750 – including $3,150 in ABA (applied behavioural analysis) training for staff and $5,600 extra for staffing.
The staffing costs include extra pay for educational assistants and curriculum facilitators.
Trustee Dee Beattie, one of the school board reps who worked with the inclusive education review team last year, said the relatively low budget shouldn’t be construed as a lack of action.
She noted that the $5,600 in staffing costs doesn’t highlight the creation of two new district administrator positions – a vice-principal for early learning and a principal for equity and inclusion – but those positions will be an integral part of carrying out the work of the review.
She also noted that Pro-D Day training costs aren’t reflected in that budget and that a number of procedural changes have no costs attached.
Beattie also pointed out that the recommendation to ensure education assistants are present at all school-based meetings could carry some extra costs, but those costs aren’t yet known.
Trustee Maya Russell, who was also part of the inclusive education review team last year, said the action plan presents some “wonderful, wonderful work.”
“I really, really hope that the staff and families and students who participated in this will see the changes in our classrooms on a day-to-day basis and see their hopes and aspirations for their students reflected. I definitely am starting to hear that we’re going up,” she said.
“I’m sure there’s lots more to do, but I think we really have turned a corner.”
School board chair Anita Ansari thanked Cunnings for his work.
“You spent a year looking at the problems, and you’re spending this year actually fixing them,” she said. “We recognized early on that this was going to be a multi-year project, and we’re really grateful that you’re carrying it forward through some really peculiar life circumstances, and you’ve kept your momentum up.”
Cunnings will return to the board in March and June 2021 with updates on how the implementation of the recommendations is coming along.
A detailed outline of the implementation plan can be found in the report from the Oct. 27 school board meeting here.
