NOTE: This story was updated at 7 p.m. on Aug. 26 with a link to the New Westminster school district's back-to-school plan.
New Westminster Secondary School students should be able to get most of the courses they requested for fall – but some of their electives may look a little different than they used to.
The New Westminster school district has announced major scheduling changes for the high school to accommodate the “learning groups” required in the provincial K-12 Education Restart Plan. The school district has been able to keep those groups smaller than the provincially mandated 120, with groups varying from 90 to 100 students.
To make those numbers work, NWSS has switched to a “quarter” system for grades 10, 11 and 12, rather than the usual semester system. For the 2020/21 school year, students will study only two subjects each quarter, with each quarter lasting about 10 weeks.
Grade 9 students will continue under a semester system in order to help make the transition to secondary school easier on students.
“The process of reorganizing the high school schedules to the meet the demands of cohorts and all of the new safety guidelines was no easy feat,” said the district’s communications manager, Kristen Keighley-Wight. “Our administrative teams looked at the schedules of each and every one of the nearly 2,000 students, one-by-one, doing their very best to give students the classes they signed up for.”
She said Grade 9 students may notice more changes to their schedules than older students will because of the continuation of the semester system.
“It did mean that we had to make more changes than we did for the older students,” she said. “But we made sure that every student can fulfil their core class requirements, and we have used the alternate elective choices lists each student provided us where we were no longer able to offer or fit in certain electives.”
In grades 10 through 12, she said the shift to the quarter system allowed the school to successfully accommodate the majority of course requests for the students.
One exception is electives that are offered as multi-age classes.
“In cases where electives were designed to work across grade levels, there are some classes we had to remove as options in order to maintain the integrity of the learning groups,” Keighley-Wight said.
Students may also notice that some of their elective courses will look different than they would have a year ago.
Keighley-Wight noted the district is following Ministry of Education guidelines as teachers and other team members reimagine what lessons might look like and readjust, as needed, to keep classroom spaces safe.
“For instance, when it comes to classes like PE, our teachers will be looking to provide lessons that engage students more often in individual versus team games, selecting activities that reduce the use of shared equipment or incorporating more exploration of outdoor spaces,” she said. “There may be projects or tools in woodworking classes that need to be modified, and there will be strict rules around not sharing instruments in band.”
Full details of the district’s back-to-school plans are now online at https://newwestschools.ca/the-plan-phase-2-return-to-schools/
School principals will be reaching out to families on Friday, Aug. 28 with school-specific details.
