With possibility of teacher loss at Swift Current Academy, parent council worried

Parents with children at Swift Current Academy have been fighting for years against the possibility of cuts or closure, and it looks like they'll be fighting again this fall.

"I've fought before and I'll fight again," says Nancy Barrington, head of the school council.

Swift Current is a K-12 school with17 students enrolled this year. There are three teachers there2 teaching units, as classified by the school board one of whom spends a quarter of their time as the dedicated instructional resource teacher (IRT), working with students with specific needs.

If we have the school here and the resources, they should stay here.- Nancy Barrington

Barrington said the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District has advised the school they will be losinghalf a teaching unit,which translates to one of the three teachers leaving, as well as the loss ofdedicated IRT hours.

"I mean, we're upset about all of it, obviously, but losing our resource teacher special needs teacher?" Barrington said.

"She does support services for multiple children in our school, so I mean it's obviously being utilized. If we're gonna be putting children in a classroom now without her support, they're gonna have to be learning on their own."

The teacher who would be the one moved elsewhere in this proposed plan for September, Barrington said, is the only one trained specifically to teach junior high and high school-level courses.

"They're kinda juggling around the units a bit, so there'll be two full-time teachers here, but one teacher will be physically leaving the building," Barrington said.

There is a single student at Swift Current Academy already enrolled to start junior high courses there in the fall, but there won't be anyone trained to teach them.

"I mean, what do you do if your child is going to school and they're saying you have no teacher here for them?" she said.

"They're obviously trying to bully them into going elsewhere. They're trying to do cuts where they can. I mean, we're at bare-bone minimum right now, so it's getting to the point where they're trying to force closure from our understanding."

Revisit, confirm in September

The NLESD said in a statement that the preliminary plan for September is based on anticipated enrolment and configuration of the grades for a May 8 deadline, in accordance with the collective agreement.

The district said it could not comment on the "specific allocation to Swift Current Academy at this time."

"Year over year, there can be changes in enrolment numbers and/or grade configurations such that allocations also change either up or down," the statement read.

"These numbers are revisited and confirmed in September."

But Barrington said the district hasn't been able to provide clear answers as to why the Swift Current plan for September looks the way it does.

"That's our question. We're not given any rationale, no justification. I've asked the board what their ruling is or why they're doing it and basically they're saying it's a form of equation they have to go through," she said.

"I'm not understanding it because we do have the need there for it. Nothing has changed;our student numbers are going up, actually, next year. They're not giving us a clear-cut answer."

Barrington added that the instructor who does the IRT hours now, who will go to a full-time teaching role in the fall, has already done up an IRT-specific plan for next year, and that has her concerned that the expectation of delivering on IRT programming will still be in place.

"They can't try to guilt her into doing it or assume that she's going to do it because the courses are now done up for next year, before this decision was made, but I guess they're assuming she's gonna do it," Barrington said.

"But I mean, it's not gonna be in her job description, so she's not expected to do it. And she shouldn't be expected to do it."

As for the possibility of children attending a different school, Barrington said she and other parents are dead-set against it, adding it would mean an hour on a bus every day for children.

"The highway is a dangerous highway. We've been through this a couple of years ago with potential for closure and we managed to keep it open, so I mean it's just student safety," she said.

"I have younger children.I have two that go here and I can't see putting them on a bus. I drive to Clarenville every day for work and that's tough enough for me as an adult. I can't see putting children on a bus that long. If we have the school here and the resources, they should stay here."

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