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Eggen lauds impact of Classroom Improvement Fund increase in Red Deer visit

May 31, 2018 | 3:10 PM

Alberta’s Education Minister David Eggen stopped by Joseph Welsh Elementary School in Red Deer on Thursday to see first-hand how increases to the government’s Classroom Improvement Fund (CIF) are impacting students.

He visited with students while touring the school and learning about its special features such as the sensory room and literacy and technology classrooms, all benefitting from this year’s CIF increase of $1.3 million for Red Deer Public Schools.

 

 

Eggen says the Classroom Improvement Fund was negotiated through the collective agreement with teachers and school boards coming together to see what could be done on the ground to make learning better for kids.

“It was $75 million last year,” Eggen points out. “I saw how incredibly successful it was and so I put it in the regular budget for this school year. We’re continuing with the Classroom Improvement Fund, $77 million this year and I’m asking people to focus on teachers and support staff in the classrooms, I think that’s probably a good way to improve classrooms across the province.”

Stu Henry, Superintendent for Red Deer Public Schools says the new investment will make a big difference for students.

“The money is targeted at English language learners, so our ESL students and also inclusive education, so targeting some of the students that need extra supports,” he adds. “It’ll make a big difference for us, we’re looking at hiring six additional teachers for English Language Learners and also starting up six pilot projects in our elementaries to help deal with students that need some self-regulation control help. Then the rest of the money will go just to targeting inclusive education needs all over the district.”

However, an increase in the per-pupil grant would also be more than welcome, Henry  admits.

“At the end of the day, we really want local autonomy to make the decisions where the money goes and if the per-pupil grant was increased by the same amount that the Classroom Improvement Fund has, we’d have the autonomy to do that here.”

In that regard, Eggen says he’s willing to entertain additional ways of investing in education.

“I’m open to always making strong investment for education,” states Eggen. “Barb (Miller – MLA Red Deer South) and I, we advocate like crazy for our schools and for our kids and I’m looking at all possibilities here for the next school year because we can see it growing and flourishing, which is what we want.”

Bill Kwasny, Principal at Joseph Welsh Elementary School says they’ve worked on four different initiatives with their Classroom Improvement Fund money.

“We purchased what’s called LLI kits which are Leveled Learning Intervention and gives students the opportunity to have an intensive, short–term intervention in their reading to help bring them up to grade level,” he explains. “We’ve invested in what’s called a sensory room which gives children the opportunity to help themselves self-regulate and we also invested in technology where we’ve purchased more laptop Chromebooks so that we have the opportunity to have more children using them for their learning.”

In addition, Kwasny says they’ve also purchased some reading tables and standup tables which have yet to arrive but concludes the impact of the Classroom Improvement Fund increase has been great for their school.

Eggen also visited Hunting Hills High School on Thursday, At Hunting Hills where he met with a number of Career and Technology Studies classes and engaging with students in a question and answer period.