The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division has received mid-year funding from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education to support growing student enrollment. This was part of a $29.5 million addition to the total 2024-25 investment of $58 million to help alleviate space pressures in schools across the province.
Director of Education Ken Sampson said each year in late winter, the school divisions are required to put projections into the Ministry based on the information that they have at the time to indicate the number of students they anticipate from Kindergarten to Grade 12, or, in the case of the HFRCSSD, from Kindergarten to Grade 9. Then, at the end of September, the division provides an actual count of students, which then results in an adjustment to revenue for the division.
"As it would happen in this particular cycle, from the winter of last year to the fall of 2024, there was a sizable increase in enrollment in our schools, not just in anyone in particular, although Weyburn did see some significant growth, but as an entire division," he noted. "As a result of the enrollment growth, then the government makes an adjustment in what we call 'top-up' funding."
"Based on that information, we immediately went to our administrators and our learning facilitators and said, 'we're seeing a variety of different things that are coming to our schools; we're seeing increased complexities, we're looking for an increase in numbers of students who are coming who are English as an additional language students', and so all of those things together, we just realized that there was an added degree of complexity within our division and so we wanted to bring people together to have a conversation around that in terms of how it would look differently moving forward."
Sampson said through those conversations they determined that something fairly different should be done with the funding.
A new 'RTI' or Response to Intervention Support Worker position was created, with one now in place full-time at St. Michael School in Weyburn, and one in Estevan to be split evenly between St. Mary's School and Sacred Heart School.
"That's where our larger schools are housed, so it was there where we saw enrollment growth and it was important to be able to put some additional supports in place from the school's perspective."
Additionally, these schools now also have full-time positions filled for English as an Additional Language (EAL) Monitors for the growing number of students whose first language at home is not English.
"We're fully staffed and very, very well received by school communities and parents as well. So we're excited about that."
Sampson said there will also be some money going to each school in the division to support capacity-building with Education Assistants.
"The dollar amounts would be given to schools where principals would have some flexibility in terms of how to use that to help build the capacity of support staff."
"It's really a wonderful story knowing that we were able to respond with the help of this top-up funding revenue, that we would be able to put those supports in place to support our schools, so it's been a great thing," he shared. "When the government funds based on a budget that's released well in advance of the actual enrollment-confirming numbers, then it's a bit of a shot in the dark, and so we're very grateful that the government recognizes that the enrollment counts kind of ebb and flow from one year to the next."
He added that in Weyburn, and to some degree as well in Estevan, they have seen a significant number of newcomer families in their schools, emphasizing the importance of being able to offer support for them both in the community and most particularly in the schools.
Saskatchewan's Education Minister Everett Hindley said, "With Saskatchewan's growing population, we recognize the need for additional classroom space to support students and educators. This additional investment will ensure schools that anticipate capacity challenges in 2025-26 have the necessary infrastructure to accommodate students."