Eighty-five students in Holy Trinity Catholic School Division are learning in a digital classroom this year, with some families choosing this route since their child has a compromised immune system.
Holy Trinity has committed resources to ensure a safe learning experience for health-challenged students and families, while staff are still able to deliver high-quality Catholic education, according to the division.
As of Sept. 30, 74 students in Moose Jaw learning digitally, including 10 students at St. Michael School, five at St. Mary School, six at St. Margaret School, 33 at St. Agnes School and 20 at Sacred Heart School. There are 11 students at All Saints Catholic School in Swift Current also learning this way.
There are differences between learning online digitally and being home-schooled, explained education director Sean Chase.
With home-schooling, families take full responsibility for instructing and assessing their kids. Parents would contact school division staff around August or September and propose how they would deliver education for that school year. Staff would then review and give feedback. Parents would then provide a summary in June of how their child performed.
“They’re truly working independently as a family, and … that’s a provision provided for in the Education Act in Saskatchewan,” Chase said. “(That is) significantly different than what we’re offering in terms of our enhanced digital classroom.”
With online learning, parents still give support, but teachers from Holy Trinity provide instruction and assessment. Staff stay in regular contact by using online and offline tools and are more involved in students’ learning.
Last summer, the division heard from many families about their experiences teaching students in the spring with supplemental learning. Many families said it was a complex task walking students through the curriculum every day, Chase said. Parents were not confident they could lead the traditional, home-based education program themselves, so they wanted the division to provide the guidance and planning of instruction.
Chase didn’t think online schooling was necessarily geared just for students who were health-challenged. However, with a pandemic happening, many families in immunocompromised situations felt more comfortable choosing this solution over home-based education or sending their kids to school.
Division enrolment
As of Sept. 30, there were 2,301 students in Holy Trinity Catholic School Division. This is down by 131 students based on the projections of 2,432 that division administration made for this school year.
In comparison, there were 2,399 students in the division as of Sept. 30, 2019.
The division is searching through school records and using data from the Ministry of Education to figure out why 131 students have disappeared from the rolls, explained Chase. The division believes many left the province during the pandemic, while some who participate in high-level sports such as hockey did not come to Moose Jaw due to movement restrictions. Immigrant families expected to arrive from outside Canada also failed to materialize due to border closures.
“We’ve had a number of students who typically attend Phoenix Academy who have — during the pandemic — decided to walk away at this point and pursue full-time work as young adults,” he added.
The division office is confident it has exhausted every option while searching for these missing students but wanted to perform its due diligence and look out for their best interests.
“… When you’re down in projections, we always want to have a strong reflection process to see if there is anything in our world that has caused this lack of enrolment in certain areas,” Chase said, adding he spoke with the minister of education and said he is confident the decline is due to pandemic.
“We’re very pleased that our online learning has met the needs of our immunocompromised kids and families, and that has stabilized in the first two months here … ,” he added.
A decline in students could hurt how much funding the ministry provides, but Chase said he is confident that the ministry has heard the division’s reasons and will provide sufficient grants for next year.
