The late spring snowstorm on March 4-5 had an impact on the quarterly numbers for bussing students in the Southeast Cornerstone School Division, trustees were told at their monthly board meeting on Wednesday.
Facilities and transportation director Andy Dobson said the storm shut down most bussing in the school division on March 5, and then on March 6 even the in-town bus routes in Weyburn were shut down as buses were getting stuck in residential areas.
There were days when buses in the Moosomin area were also shut down due to foggy conditions. The result is there were 3,295 students were bussed in the quarter, compared to the previous quarter when a total of 4,199 students were transported.
The bus fleet also gained five new buses during the quarter, and a number of older buses were sold by the school division, said Dobson.
The difficulty of finding substitute bus drivers persisted, which was noted as a problem in the previous quarter, and some routes had to be cancelled when sub drivers could not be found in time.
Cornerstone is servicing four buses for Holy Family in Weyburn, and four in Estevan, and there have been no difficulties with that service, said Dobson.
Cornerstone had 113 routes and 92 contracted drivers during this last quarter.
The average one-way ride time for students in the last quarter was 48 minutes, with the longest one-way ride time being a route that takes a bus from the Torquay area into Estevan. That overall trip averages about 90 minutes.
In other school board business, deputy director Keith Keating presented the finalized school calendar for the 2018-19 school year, with provision for 950 instructional hours, or 184 student days.
He noted that Cornerstone has been collaborating on the school calendar with the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division since 2014 so that dates could be coordinated, such as professional days for teaching staff and bussing schedules.
There were two options for a calendar submitted to all the teaching staff in the two school divisions, and 58 per cent of Holy Family staff and 75 per cent of Cornerstone staff voted in favour of the calendar with a longer Christmas break. Schools will break for Christmas on Friday, Dec. 21, and class will not return until Monday, Jan. 7, 2019.
This was the calendar approved by the board, and it will now be submitted to the Ministry of Education for their approval.
The school division’s coordinator of curriculum, Michael Graham, made a detailed report on the changes at the board meeting on Wednesday. He heads up the curriculum team for Cornerstone which includes Weyburn Comp teacher Adam Wilson, and Estevan Comp teacher James Jones.
The curriculum renewal includes four subject areas, including implementing vocal jazz, renewing of music, drama, dance and the visual arts, developing a provincial guitar curriculum for Grades 10, 11 and 12, and renewing the arts curriculum for the 10, 20 and 30 levels.
Social studies is another course undergoing renewal, with Graham calling it a “complete overhaul” for all three high school grade levels. He said it will still be a mandatory course for graduation, and they want to look at a local context as well provincial, national and worldwide topics. Another area being renewed is Practical and Applied Arts (PAA), an area where some of the curriculum was developed in the 1990s or 2000s, and the curriculum team is looking at how these are organized and set up.
