Arne Petryshen
School District 6 is getting set for the start of classes which begin Tuesday, Sept. 8.
Paul Carriere, superintendent of School District 6, said district staff and teachers are looking forward to the year.
“It’s an exciting year up ahead, and we’re really looking forward to it,” Carriere said.
While enrolment numbers won’t be known until September 30, Carriere said there has been a recent trend in Kimberley in terms of increasing primary school enrolment.
“So Lindsay Park Primary School in Kimberley is really full, Marysville has a little bit of space, but we’re seeing some increasing numbers at the primary level in Kimberley — which is really encouraging,” he said.
“McKim Middle School has a bigger population than it’s had for many years. I think it will be in the neighbourhood of 320 kids. So that’s pretty big for a middle school.”
Carriere noted the international program is doing very well.
“We have an increase in numbers over the previous year in our international program,” he said. “Most of those students coming from Germany.”
He said it is likely due to their established relationships with agencies in Germany, but the three regions also just seem to be a popular destination for German students.
Across all three zones of the district, there are new staff members, but he said there won’t be too many new faces.
“There’s not a big turnover of staff going into the new year,” he said.
“One of the important things this year is that it’s the implementation of the new B.C. curriculum at grade K-9,” he said. “So it’s an exploration year for teachers to kind of get into the new curriculum and explore it and kind of learn how to work with it.”
He also said they have a continued focus on their district direction, which are the big picture goals for the school board set for the period of 2013 to 2018.
“We’re continuing that work,” he said.
Carriere noted they welcome a new secretary treasurer to the district — Dale Culler — who started on Aug. 1. Culler is the former chief financial officer for the Town of Taber, Alberta. That comes after the retirement of Cameron Dow, who was with the district for 28 years.
“We don’t actually have any new principals or vice-principals this year in the district, everybody’s the same,” he said.
Of note, the school district now has a psychologist on staff, which they are excited about.
“We have a full time district psychologist now,” he said. “In the past, our psychology services have been contracted.”
The new position will be stationed in Invermere, but will serve all three zones — Invermere, Golden and Kimberley.
There are 19 schools in the district, including the distributed learning school.
“We have three alternative schools, which are all connected to the secondary schools. In the Kimberley example there’s Selkirk Secondary and then there’s Kimberley Alternate. Then we also have Rocky Mountain Distributed Learning.”