In November, Western School Division (WSD) applied for additional funding through The Manitoba Education Intensive Newcomer Support Project Grant to support the large influx of newcomer students to the division.
Assistant Superintendent Marianne Fenn explained, the division has seen 150 newcomer students since September, with 70 of them coming from Ukraine.
"We've had a large increase in the number of newcomer families. We've always had lots of newcomer families coming into Morden, but a substantial increase in this school year," she said. "An opportunity was given for divisions to apply for some additional funds as they (the Province) were offering another $900,000 in funding...and we put in an application in November. We have just recently heard and received official paperwork that we've received $100,000 of that grant for our school division, to work on some of the projects that we've proposed."
WSD had a number of ways to support these newcomer students and families, like adding personnel.
"For example, we have homeschool liaison workers in our school division. For at least the last 10-11 years, there's been two people doing that job full time. That has really become a stretch for them to be able to encompass all the ongoing needs of families in our division and also to include all of the newcomers," said Fenn. "They play a big part in registering them in school, and getting kids tours of schools, and helping families understand the school system, including maybe where their bus stop is, for example, or what school supplies they need, or what time the school day begins and ends, and how our lunch programs work, etc."
She went on to say, the money will go further.
"We've also spent some of those dollars, and plan to continue to spend some of those dollars, on additional clinical supports like speech pathologists or psychologists, occupational therapists to work with some of the kids who have come into the division that we didn't have the time to plan for ahead of time in some of those areas and some of the needs that are presenting. Just like our own kids who've been here all along need those supports, so do the new kids that are coming that we just didn't have additional time available for them."
Finally, there are more hands-on ways to support learning and to overcome some barriers, such as language. Fenn noted some of the Ukrainian students, due to the nature of their rushed arrival to Canada, have lower levels of English than the previous newcomers that have prepared over time to come to Canada, who came through Morden's Immigration program.
"We also are looking at purchasing some technology, hardware and software, to help support translation. And that might be for use by a classroom teacher or by an EAL specialist in a classroom, or even by those home school liaison workers as they're enrolling kids and helping with that registration process. I think finally, we're just looking at some classroom resources that can help either our English as an Additional Language Teacher or our classroom teachers, with things like low vocabulary but high interest, culturally sensitive reading materials."
Fenn said this funding allows all students to receive support.
"All kids will benefit from this because classroom resources are stretched thin and the more help, we have, means the more help that's in the hands of every kid in the classroom. Just like the home school liaison workers, had a standard and traditional caseload of families they worked with and supported, they'll have more time to work with those families with the addition of some additional supports. In the same way an additional teacher or educational assistance in the classroom or extra resources, technology-based resources or hard copy book-based resources will help distribute the amount of supports across all the kids in the schools. Plus, they have the opportunity to learn about each other's unique and interesting cultures and backgrounds, and we're finding our students are really having an enjoyable time doing that, when we hear back from them."