BARRHEAD/WESTLOCK — Thanks to overwhelming staff demand and fairly strong support from parents as demonstrated by a recent survey, the Pembina Hills School Division will again run a week-long fall break during the second week of November in the 2024-2025 school year.
During their Dec. 13 meeting, Pembina Hills trustees passed a motion to approve the proposed 2024-2025 school year calendar.
Raime Drake, director of education services, walked Pembina Hills trustees through the new school year, which will begin with a staff day on Aug. 26, followed by a collaboration day on Aug. 27.
“We really heard from our teachers and our educational assistants that they need that time together to transition classes and get to know students ahead of the first day of school,” Drake said.
The first day for students will be Aug. 28, and classes will continue on Aug. 29 and 30. Drake noted they heard that students, teachers and staff like using those three days to get settled before the Labour Day weekend.
Sept. 16 will then serve as the date of the division’s “opening day,” where staff congregate at a central location to enjoy a meal with colleagues and hear a presentation.
In previous years, the opening day was held at the start of the school year, but the division changed things up this fall, and on Sept. 19, 2023, staff from all over Pembina Hills converged at the Westlock Community Hall to hear a presentation from Dr. Michael Ungar, a world-renowned resilience expert.
Drake said that staff appreciated holding the opening day in mid-September, as they didn’t have to deal with the pressure of the school year start-up.
“That was really well-received across the board,” she added, noting that the opening day will now take place on a Monday to avoid conflict with sports tournaments.
Drake said Nov. 1 will be a teacher-directed day as outlined in the collective agreement, while the fall break will run from Nov. 11-15.
Board chair Judy Lefebvre indicated she liked how the new fall break was structured with Remembrance Day at the start, noting that the week off this past November created some confusion for schools.
Trustee David Truckey added that he had also got some feedback that it forced schools to host Remembrance Day events too far in advance of Nov. 11.
Moving ahead a month, Drake said Pembina Hills is bound by the collective agreement to take two weeks off at Christmas, so there will be no classes from Dec. 23 to Jan. 3, 2025.
Much of January will be taken up with the writing of diploma and Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs), the final day of which will be Jan. 27.
Drake said this causes a bit of imbalance with the end of the first semester and the start of the second, but in consultation with principals, they indicated they would prefer Semester 2 to start on Jan. 28.
There will be another teacher-directed day required by the collective agreement on March 14, as well as two more collaboration days on May 2 and June 2.
The last week of May and almost the entire month of June will be taken up with the writing of exams.
After clarifying that elementary and junior high schools are required to fit in 950 hours of instruction within a year and high schools are required to offer 1,000 hours, trustee Maureen Schnirer asked what happens in the last couple weeks of June if students have already written the PATs and diploma exams.
Drake said it was important to remember that these tests are only one measure used by educators, and they aren’t intended to measure everything they are expected to teach as part of the curriculum.
As such, there is still lots of learning and instruction that occurs after the PATs and diploma exams are written, she said.
More generally, Drake said there has been a trend towards earlier PAT and diploma exam dates, which Alberta Education has cited as being for security reasons.
Parent survey
Following the first-ever district-wide fall break this past November, Drake said a digital survey went out to parents asking what they thought of taking the week off and whether they supported similar breaks in other years.
In total, they received 741 responses, with 52.6 per cent of parents indicating it was good for their family, 23.6 per cent saying it was neither good nor bad, and 18.3 per cent saying it created some hardship. The remaining 5.5 per cent indicated they did not know.
Those who favoured the fall break indicated that it helped them with the harvest or attending Farmfair International, which ran from Nov. 8-11. Others said it allowed for extra family time, as it aligned with students returning from post-secondary institutions for a visit.
Those opposed said that arranging childcare proved to be a problem, while a sizeable group indicated that students already get too many days off.
When asked in the survey about how often families wanted to be consulted about the calendar, 44 per cent indicated they wanted to be asked every year, 8.6 per cent requested every other year, 14 per cent said every few years and 33.3 per cent indicated no preference.
Finally, when asked about the method for being consulted about the calendar, 93.7 per cent said they preferred direct parent surveys over methods like submitting feedback through school councils.
