Back early, kids!

Despite the best efforts of local school administrators, Jasper students will have to return to class before the Labour Day weekend next fall. The proposed school calendars for Jasper Elementary School and Jasper Junior/Senior High were rejected by the regional school board last week. After the Grande Yellowhead Regional Division sets the basic parameters for the school year, such as number of instructional hours and days, each community prepares a proposed teaching calendar. In Jasper’s case, the only point of contention was the later start date. This was rejected by the board because the GYRD is attempting to move towards a more uniform calendar across the division. Ideally, said board spokesperson Nicole Merrifield, the division would like to see all schools in the jurisdiction start and finish classes on the same day. The schools in Grande Cache has requested an early start date but their proposal was likewise rejected.

Local principals reacted to the decision with a mixture of resignation and frustration.

“We requested it because it was recommended by the school councils,” said Jr/Sr High principal Dale Karpluk. “We’re a tourist town and we’re very busy until Labour Day and many high school students work through the summer.”

While Karpluk and elementary school principal Raymond Blanchette-Dube both understand why the GYRD is pursuing a more harmonized school year in general, they believe there is room for some flexibility.

“It’s not like we’re connected to any of the other schools through busing,” said Karpluk. “There’s no harm in being independent. It really makes no difference to us when Hinton and Grande Cache start. It’s not like we’re having meetings with the other schools in the first week, and 3V classes don’t start in the first few days.”

Now, board-level administrators will work with the two schools to reconfigure the calendar to meet the requirement of an earlier start. This means that more Fridays will have to be declared early dismissal or non-student days, something that Karpluk and Blanchette-Dube had tried to keep to a minimum. 

“We’ve never really embraced the whole Friday off thing,” said Blanchette-Dube. “Five days of education and a consistent routine is a good thing.” Other communities in the GYRD prefer more non-student Fridays because of the number of parents that work four days on and four days off. 

“It seems like an odd requirement to have to come back early when the community doesn’t want to and take non-student days during the year,” said Karpluk. “The board has their reasons and I get the reasons for consistency, but I think that there should be some common sense to what we do.”

The waiting game

The votes have been held and the proposals have been sent. Now, all that the GYRD and the Conseil Scolaire Centre-Nord can do is wait. The two school authorities are collaborating on a shared school proposal for Jasper Junior/Senior High and while both boards support the project, it remains to be seen what Alberta Infrastructure thinks of it.

The GYRD board approved their three-year capital plan at last week’s regular board meeting (April 5). The Jasper shared school is one of the priority projects identified as part of the plan and while this means that it will be considered before some other locally planned projects, there’s no guarantee that it will receive funding this year.

“Alberta Infrastructure accepts the plans but they may not fund particular projects,” said GYRD spokesperson Nicole Merrifield. “They just receive the plan and then dole out dollars as they see fit.”

A modernization of Harry Collinge school in Hinton, for instance, has been part of the annual capital plans for a number of years, but has yet to receive funding. Given that the Jasper project is shared between two school divisions, the GYRD is confident that the process will be expedited in this case.

“It’s a very political process,” Merrifield acknowledged. “But essentially as soon as they see that there are partners involved the application goes straight to the top of the pile.”

GYRD staff are currently working with the francophone board to finalize the particulars of the joint submission. The boards could decide to send in one application with the entire price tag for the modernization and expansion, or they could choose to submit two separate proposals that divide the costs in half. Either way, the plans have to be sent to the government by the end of this month.

When will the regional authorities hear back? That’s anyone’s guess, according to Merrifield.

“I’m not going to editorialize,” she said when asked if the government tends to take a long time in making funding decisions of this nature. “I will say that it’s hard for us to make our plans when we don’t know when decisions will be made.”