At last Thursday's (February 8) Rocky View School Board Meeting, Trustees heard a mid-year update on the division's Four Year Plan.

Superintendent Greg Luterbach explained the update comes annually, to update the board on progress being made. The Four Year Plan is a strategic plan for the division built around three goals: Learners are successful, learners are engaged and learners are supported.

Luterbach said a highlight this year is improved literacy in the division. Literacy has been a big push in Rocky View in the Four Year Plan, and through the implementation of a literacy team, there have been positive results.

"This is their second year of existence and they've worked with every school in the school division this fall and early winter, which is fantastic. Schools are seeing great value in that. We're seeing consistency of practice across the school division on the literacy side, and that's been a real advantage."

Those meetings with schools resulted in over 700 face to face interactions between the Literacy team and Rocky View teachers and administrators. The focus last year was on developing literacy resources for grades 1-4. This year, the team will shift the focus to include kindergarten and grades 5-8, with high school following next year.

While literacy is improving in Rocky View, Luterbach said an area of improvement going forward will be numeracy.

"We have a one person team and she is just new this year. She's been going out and building those relationships with teachers and working in some small groups and working directly with some staff. That's one of our challenges, with one person how do you build capacity across an entire system."

While numeracy will be an area of focus going forward, the division believes simply having a numeracy specialist is progress.

Luterbach said another push has been giving parents a window into their children's classrooms. He said teachers already do a great job communicating student learning, and they've seen an increase in parents using a new tool, PowerSchool's Parent Portal.

"You can access and see how your student is doing academically any time from anywhere on any device. That's been a real push for us, we have more and more teachers using that and putting more data into that."

Luterbach said other highlights this year include beneficial partnerships with community groups and continued support of teachers to deal with students' emotional and social needs through additional training.

 

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