The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Opponents of the effort remain vocal, but Creighton Director of Education Austin Gerein is getting on with the business of helping to develop a new high school program for the Saskatchewan community. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm an administrator, and I'll do that job to the best of my ability," he said yesterday. "Right now, my job is to help implement this high school." Gerein will be a busy man in the coming months, with grade 10 set to be added to Creighton Community School this September. Grades 11 and 12 are to follow in 2005 and 2006. "There's an awful lot of work to do to implement any new grade," he said. A key area for the school expansion, naturally, will be staffing. Next month, Gerein will visit universities in Saskatoon and Regina to interview prospective candidates for the up to 2.5 new teaching positions that will be created for the upcoming school year. See 'Strong' P.# Con't from P.# A number of current Creighton school teachers will take their areas of expertise, be it math or physical education, to the high school level. Creighton school also plans to hire additional non-teaching staff, in areas such as vocational programming, for the high school. In the end, staffing might be the easy part of the undertaking. Administrators must also determine many other aspects of the high school, such as its attendance policy, timetabling and the specifics of the potential practical and applied arts courses. Parents are being asked to provide their input and guidance in such areas at a meeting scheduled for tomorrow evening at the Creighton school gymnasium. "We're going to get on with our work and we're going to involve our parents and our students," said Gerein. The director of education envisioned the high school having a "strong academic focus" with high-end courses such as calculus and biology, as well as more general options such as creative writing and graphic arts. "We want our kids to be the best they can be," said Gerein. "I'm sure our staff will do exactly that. I have every confidence in them." As for the continued opposition to the high school by Citizens For Better Education, Gerein said there won't be any turning back unless the school board rescinds its vote in favour of the high school. In December, the board voted 4-2 for the new grades and then reaffirmed that decision by a 5-1 vote last week. "I know the Education Act is very clear. This is a matter for the board to decide," said Gerein. A common criticism the school board has faced relates to the number of students who will be enrolled in the high school program Ñ about 100 by 2006. While a number of parents like the idea of smaller class sizes, others wonder whether the school might be too small to be of the same quality as larger institutes. But for Gerein, who has worked in or for about a dozen K-12 schools, which are common in Saskatchewan, bigger doesn't mean better. "Being big doesn't necessarily mean being excellent," he said. "I think you can be big and excellent and you can be smaller and excellent. And we intend to be excellent."
