By Adam Ophus

Pressing on

Wild Rose School Division doing well during pandemic: Volkman

Apr 17, 2020 | 11:26 AM

Schools have remained closed to students since the provincial government announced on March 15 that classes would be cancelled until further notice.

Wild Rose School Division (WRSD) has been doing what it can to make sure that student education, along with safety, remain top priorities.

Superintendent Brad Volkman says that they are encouraging staff that can do so to work from home.

“Some staff prefer to work from their classroom while others prefer to work from home. Some staff are doing a combination of the two… I would say that the majority of our staff are working from home,” Volkman explained, describing how they’ve been adhering to the province’s social distancing recommendations.

Volkman says the division was very fortunate in the fact that they started using tools like Google Apps for Education and Google Classroom years ago. This made it easier to allow teachers to teach students from home and assign homework remotely, he explains, since they already had some of the knowledge needed to use the programs before the COVID-19 crisis.

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WRSD asked its schools across the division to report on student engagement with the new online learning process. They found that teachers were able to remain in contact with nearly 100% of students. Between 70% to 90% of those were engaged, making an effort or at least trying to take part the best they could. Less than 6% of students were needing to rely on the exchange of paper materials in order to remain engaged in learning.

With the significant changes that have taken place in schools as a result of the pandemic, Volkman says WRSD have been able to withstand the budget cuts from education that the UCP were forced to implement to help support the battle against COVID-19, reducing the transportation budget by $646,391 and $617,141 from base instruction.

Volkman ensured that no WRSD employees have been laid off.

“We were able to find the most of the savings needed through the reduction of other operational costs like travel, professional development and not needing to hire any substitute or casual staff during this time that schools are closed to students.”

He also reiterated that construction of the new Evergreen School in Drayton Valley is continuing, and they are entering the planning phase for the construction of the new Condor Elementary School and Leslieville High School.

“It is these types of projects that will help get some Albertans back to work during this pandemic and time of economic decline,” Volkman stated.

He spoke of how proud he and everyone in the school division have been of there staff during these trying times.

“We realize that each home situation is a bit different, making it more complicated for some than others in terms of being able to access our staff or complete assignments.”

Any students or family members that are experiencing difficulties regarding student learning or wellbeing, are encouraged to contact their school by email or telephone for any assistance.

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