The Prince Albert Catholic School Division has received a number of grants and other money to support a wide array of projects recently including support from the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MNS). The board of education was updated on a number of these projects by director of education Lorel Trumier during their regular meeting on Monday.
The division received word last summer that the MNS education department would be sending 204 Chromebook computers as gifts to donate to students who are self-declared Métis. The division officially received the Chromebooks and are in the process of distributing them.
“What’s interesting in this story is we were told that we were going to receive the Chromebooks at the beginning of the year and I think it is an indicator of the time lag in terms of manufacturing the Chromebooks that we only received them recently. Nonetheless our families and our students will be very excited,” Trumier told trustees Monday.
Trumier explained that there are not enough to distribute to every self-declared child. Family names are being entered into a computer generated random draw. Successful recipients will be contacted this week.
“We are just in the process of getting those out to the families and we appreciate the support the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan provided,” she added.
The board of education agreed to pass on their thanks to MNS.
The division was also informed of an allocation of $42,250 by the Government of Saskatchewan to support online and remote French Immersion learning in the division.
“I really would like to credit superintendent Robert Tessier for the work he has done on the application for a funding grant,” Trumier said.
The grant represents the 2020-2021 federal contribution which is 50 per cent of the total cost under the Canada-Saskatchewan Agreement for Minority Language Education and Second Official Language Instruction, a project running from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023. The division will contribute the other 50 per cent for the project.
“We are pleased about it, it means exciting things for our students and our teachers in learning more about how to support French Immersion online learning. It’s particularly important at our high school,” Trumier told the board.
There will also be a grant of $6,900 from the Ministry of Education for associated costs related to Mental Health First Aid Training. This is a one-time grant and the board was informed of it at an earlier meeting as the documentation was recently received. There is also an opportunity to send 12 staff to be trained at Mental Health First Aid-Supporting Youth training events anticipated to occur in the fall of 2021.
On Provincial Budget Day April 6 the division was allocated $20,000 to once again host summer literacy programming out of St. John Community School this year. Frontier College and the Northern Lights School Division will be coordinating the development of literacy kits.
“ It’s exciting for us to do this as it is an extension of our learning opportunities for students in our area to attend such a program. At this time because of COVID we ran Summer Literacy Program slightly different last year than we had any other year. What had happened were literacy kits were provided to students that would fall in the criteria of wanting to participate in summer camp and also who the camp was intended to support,” Trumier told the board.
Tessier and administration will work with the Ministry, Frontier College and Northern Lights School Division to provide this year’s program.
All of the items were received as information by trustees on Monday.
