The 2024-25 school year is winding down across the southeast as graduations are taking place and summer vacations are starting up. For the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division (HFRCSSD), their final day of classes is June 26th, with a couple more weeks left to go for students.
Ken Sampson, the Director of Education at the HFRCSSD, says they had a great 2024-25 school year.
"I would say that overall, we've had some very positive reports that are coming from each of our schools on having had a very successful year. Although we're noting improvements in learning and academic outcomes, the final data that would realize that kind of statement is not finalized yet. So we're just looking at preliminary information, but all of the indicators would suggest that there's been some nice growth and improvements in our student learning, which is great."
Sampson says they've been able to follow the province's plans for education well over the past few years with the provincial education plan.
As a separate school division, the HFRCSSD does differ from the rest of the province through what Sampson describes as Catholic distinctiveness. Through this, he says the division has enjoyed events such as the Advent season leading to Christmas and Lent, which lead into Easter.
Sampson says the students also got to celebrate a week centred around catholic teaching.
"One of the things that we celebrate in Catholic education is really what we call Catholic Education Week, and it's a week of planned activities over the entire week in May. It was the last week in May this year that that happened, and we get to really celebrate that beautiful gift of publicly funded Catholic education here in Saskatchewan."
Some of the schools and classes also went on various forms of pilgrimage, some of which were on-site while others were off-site, with the central office visiting the co-cathedral in Gravelbourg.
The HFRCSSD also saw a great boost to enrollment over the year, according to Sampson.
"Another thing that would speak to the year that has passed is our enrollment growth. While we didn't project at this time last year or even earlier in 2024, the projections for this current school year were lower than what we anticipated. In fact, the enrollment growth was significantly higher. It was a very positive growth. In fact we had seen in addition to 80 students over and above what we had projected."
With the new enrollments, many of whom came from outside of Canada, Sampson says they had to deal with increased complexities from students and make sure the supports and services in place could handle the students.
That's included hiring additional teachers as well as hiring Response Intervention workers and English as an Additional Language monitors.
Sampson was also pleased with their relationship with the local communities, even through the Provincial Collective Bargaining earlier this year.
For the coming year, the division will be receiving a bit more money from the province, with Preventative Maintenance and Renewal funding going from $250,000 to $337,000. Sampson talks about some of the areas those funds could go towards.
"There might be some things like washroom enhancements, modifications to various learning spaces within the school. So it's kind of all over the ma,p just in terms of the high priority areas that are identified by facilities and administration of the school to be able to identify what goes there."
With the 2025-26 school year around the corner, the HFRCSSD has a new strategic plan for the year, which will focus on the provincial government's education goals of improving student outcomes, with special attention focused on K-3 reading levels.