INNISFAIL – Four hundred and seventy five students, including 400 in K-8, have registered for the online remote learning option in the Chinook’s Edge School Division (CESD), superintendent Kurt Sacher said Thursday.
Due the COVID-19 pandemic, the online option is being made available for the 2020-2021 school year, which starts next week at its 43 schools.
The more than 11,000-student division plans to hire four additional teachers who will be dedicated solely to online learning, he said.
“We just put out an ad for four teachers in the area of remote learning,” Sacher said. “They are temporary teaching positions so anyone who is interested and qualified would be considered.
“We have other resources that we will put in place relative to the program. It will really depend on the need and if we find that we are understaffed we will add additional staff. That is just to get us started.”
The division is also looking at deploying some staff from central office to help with the online learning students, he said.
“They will help fill in the gaps and provide supports,” he said.
Of the 475 students who have been accepted for remote learning, 75 are career high program students.
“We’ve talked to them (the 75) and they don’t need additional staff in order to serve the needs of those students,” he said.
Although the process to apply for online learning through the central office has now closed, parents can still apply to access the option through an interview process, he said.
“Our philosophy is that we haven’t just said, ‘Here’s an option’. We want to have a discussion. We really believe in face-to-face learning, so we want parents to be fully aware of the choice they are making,” he said.
If a parent decides to have his or her child moved from in-person to online learning during the school years, a process is in place, he said.
“They would need to talk to the school if they are feeling like that,” he said. “It would be considered for sure if it was in the best interest of that family.
“We want to keep them in Chinook’s Edge. Our preference is face-to-face learning, but ultimately we want to keep them connected to our school division.”
Meanwhile, of the 10,480 students in the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools division, 736 students have registered for at-home learning, officials said Thursday. The division includes schools in Olds and Innisfail.
Schools in both divisions are scheduled to restart in-class learning after shuttering in-person classes in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
