Search Me 123

​“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” — William Arthur Ward

CBE Values:
Students come first
Learning is our central purpose
Public education serves the common good

As our Chief Superintendent, David Stevenson notes, our organization is strong and clear on its core purpose. We are recognized for our excellent results in student learning and our focus on continuous improvement. Together with families and students our staff play an important role in making the Calgary Board of Education a wonderful learning organization.

The number of staffing changes that occur each year is highly dependent on Alberta Education’s budget, the number of staff returning from leaves (medical, personal and maternity) as well as retirements. As a result of these factors, its been only in the past couple of years that teachers in the Calgary Board of Education have been able to apply for any classroom teaching jobs - with the exception of positions that opened as the result of several new schools opening. This year we will have “two open rounds of teaching postings” with each round offering an estimated 300 teaching positions and as a school board, we have experienced significant staffing changes throughout our system.

As discussed, there are a number of key factors impacting our budget for next year. The key factors include:

• A reduction in the number of registrations at Richmond School
• Reduced enrolment results in a reduced teaching staff – loss of an AssistantPrincipal when a school is under 10 teaching staff.
• A reduction in English Language Learner (ELL) enrolment

Pending our final numbers on September 30th, our budget allows us to fund the following staff allocation for the fall of 2017.

• 1 Principal
• 1 Administrative Secretary
• 9 Full time Teachers
• 1 0.4 Music Teacher
• 1 Behaviour Support Worker
• 3 Educational Assistants (3 hours per day)
• 1 ELL Assistant (3 hours/day)
• 1 Library Assistant (3 hours/day)

The staffing process in all school boards can be complex. As a unionized environment, the CBE has a number of different processes in place to support teachers and support staff who hold a variety of different types of contracts. Sometimes this means that staff who do not have seniority may not necessarily be able to stay as part of a school community and should funding or student enrolment change in a school, this can further impact a school’s staffing complement. To add to this complexity, sometimes policies prevent us from sharing the sensitivities around this process directly and transparently with our school community.
Every employee plays an important role at Richmond School. We all contribute to student success, whether we work in the classroom or support the work of our schools and losing staff this year will notably have a significant impact on our community. Losing one member of our community can be like losing a family member.

It is difficult to be saying goodbye to our valued staff members that are leaving Richmond School at the end of this year. Their commitment to continuous improvement, constant focus on student success and dedication to public education are all qualities that the staff, parents and students of their new schools will treasure.

As you know, on Friday, June 23, 2017 we celebrated the staff and students that will be leaving us during our Grade Six Farewell assembly. It was our honour to pay tribute to our Assistant Principal, Mr. Kenneth Perrone. He has dedicated many years of service to Richmond School and we are better learning community because of his contributions. We wish Mr. Perrone all the best as he begins a new Assistant Principal position at Balmoral School.

According to student projections for next year we will plan for approximately 193 students. Given this information the following School Organization is planned for the 2017-2018 school year. See table below for our grade configuration and teacher teams.

Kindergarten - one morning class 
Mrs. Carol Craig will teach this morning Kindergarten class. Carol has many years of experience teaching Kindergarten. Mrs. Craig has developed methods to make her Kindergarten classrooms effective and fun, she was integral to the success of this past years program and looks forward to inspiring all K students to achieve great things!

Grade 1/2 - Three classrooms – Room 15, 16 and 10
Mrs. Birkholz, Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Ng – have been a spectacular teaching team for the past four months. Building on this awesome momentum seems only natural! We welcome Mrs. Martin back for the entire year! Grade three /four Two classrooms – Room 1 and 2 Mrs. Robin Parker and Mrs. Stacy Hutchens will be our newest teaching team for next year. This dynamite teacher team has already worked together on the Richmond School Admin team this past year and together have elevated our schools focus on student leadership agency, and the development of our maker space.

Grade 5/6 - Two classrooms – Room 4 and 5
Ms. Karen Alderson and Mrs. Shelley Jarvis – have made a terrific teacher team this past year and can’t wait to build upon their successes. This team knows and understands the importance of building a community of learners! Bridges - Grade four/five/six One Classroom – Room 3 Mrs. Despina Chrisohou – continues in this brilliantly complex role working to assist each student to achieve academic success and behavioural competence through personalized programming, parental involvement, and supported transitions to regular classrooms.

Key to providing our Richmond Students with a rewarding music program, we welcome the return of Mrs. Heather Skulski. Mrs. Skulski’s music program will include many opportunities to explore and discover the properties of sound through singing, moving, speech, playing instruments, listening, and manipulating sounds in various ways. We also look forward to Mrs. Skulski’s directed group musical experiences that integrate movement, music and speech. Through these great performances, Richmond students develop musical skills such as in-tune singing, keeping a steady beat, clapping rhythmic patterns and acquiring a repertoire of poems, songs and dances.

As this is our June and final newsletter message for for 2016-2017 I thought it would be relevant to innumerate a few of the ontological stances that have been foundational to my work as your Principal:

1. All children arrive at school every day wanting to be their best selves.
2. Behavior is a sign of an unmet need – let’s get curious about the motivation behind it.
3. Schools need to be organized around the needs of the children – not the needs of the adults.
4. Everyone wants to have a sense of value and belonging – the complicated part is that we all want to be valued for different things.
5. Humans only go into conflict over things that are important to them – pay attention to what people will get upset or vocal about as it will give you clues as to what they value.

I know that the positive, student centered school climate we have created this year will continue and flourish for our 2017-2018 school year.

Have a wonderful summer filled with lots of learning, curiosity and discovery!

Sincerely,
Duncan White