Public schools offering remedial math for those needing to catch up
By JEREMY APPEL on March 28, 2019.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com
The Medicine Hat Public School Division will be offering a remedial math class through its Red Deer equivalent beginning in September.
The board approved the class at its Tuesday meeting.
“It’s for students who have missed some key concepts along the way through the junior high program,” said MHPSD board chair Rick Massini.
Junior high includes students from Grades 6-9.
There are six units covered by the course — identifying real numbers and what they represent, logic and reasoning, measurement, algebra, graphic reasoning, as well as statistics and probability.
“It’s remedial in nature, but at the same time it gives kids a base for moving into the more regimented mathematics at the Grade 10 level,” Massini said.
Students at the district’s two high schools – Medicine Hat High and Crescent Heights – will be able to partake in the course if necessary.
“What happens is we have students enrolled at Hat High or Crescent Heights, and along the way throughout the course of the year, they feel they need to take a step back, so they often transfer over to the outreach program and complete a semester there to better prepare them for high school,” said Massini.
Policy updated
The board also approved an update to Policy 182, which deals with school and program closures and relocation.
“The primary revision is the addition of clauses to include program changes,” said Massini. “For instance, we run some programs for students with special needs and occasionally there’s a need to close those programs.”
A program’s closure is based on “demand and our ability to fund them,” he added. “We may move a program to one school from another.”
Overcrowding tends to be the “primary reason” for these changes, said Massini, although the updated policy also lists fiscal constraints, health and safety concerns, as well as demographic shifts.
The policy change was instigated by the closure of the English program at Connaught School “to accommodate the growing number of students in the French immersion program.”
Whereas the old policy directs the board to convene an information meeting with affected parties to a closure or relocation, the new one places this responsibility with the superintendent upon the board’s approval.
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