Prairie Rose’s Christmas holidays will be start mid-week, end midweek

Posted on 16 March 2022 by adminis

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Prairie Rose Public School district office may be under construction, but this will not stop the board from holding their monthly meeting.

Held in the Medicine Hat District Chamber of Commerce, the March 9th board meeting opened with a presentation from Schuler School, discussing how principal Lisa Lindsay and her staff work towards literacy and numeracy, as well as new methods used to help the grades 6–9 students feel distinct from their younger peers.

The 2022-2023 School Calendar was approved by the board, with the inclusion of two wellness days for staff and students, a set day for truth and reconciliation, and what Superintendant Reagan Weeks referred to as a “bit of a polarizing” Christmas break.

“The Christmas break as it is in this proposed calendar is beginning midweek and then we are returning to class midweek,” said Weeks. “And so the rationale for proposing this calendar was to allow for days in January for high school humanities teachers to prepare for the part A of the diploma exam. And so that was the main piece of logic used to create this calendar.” 

Director of Technology Wayne Rossler brought forward the 2022 Technology Accountability report, in which the state of the technology within the division was covered, as well as future plans for upgrades and prioritized changes.

Rossler noted that from grades 4–12, there is a roughly 1:1 ratio of Chromebooks to students, including with the machines that are slated to be replaced. Other priorities included  the digitization of student records, security upgrades, the moving of files to a cloud-based data centre and the installation of Chromebook internet filtering. 

There was discussion of the possible replacement of the now-outdated Smartboard technology, but the cost and benefit will be reviewed at a later date.

The Division has been granted an extension for their annual Capital Plan by Alberta Infrastructure. The plan will be returned to the board for the April meeting.