Medicine Hat's charter school, CAPE, is all set for another school year. - NEWS FILE PHOTO
The Centre for Academic and Personal Excellence is ready for another great year. Plans are in place and everything is scheduled with the school set to go and excited about students returning.
“We have a couple of new staff members, due to resignations. We are not increasing our number of classes, but we are increasing out enrollment, we are hoping to reach 310 (students) this year,” said superintendent Teresa Di Ninno. “We are doing a very gradual, controlled increase in our enrolment so we can manage the program.”
Activities, such as the Science and Heritage Fairs, that were enjoyed by students pre-pandemic, will be pursued again this year. Additional training, sanitizing, HEPA filters and other measures are still in place.
“Those who want to wear masks are still welcome to do so and we still have available for all staff rapid test kits at no charge to continue safety measures,” stated Di Ninno.
Even though parents have been asking for a high school curriculum, CAPE will remain kindergarten to Grade 9.
“Our charter is not based on that,” said Di Ninno, “We don’t have the facilities for one, and for many other reasons it is not feasible for us right now.”
The school is publicly funded and last year the current government did a study and review of charter schools and have adjusted the funding accordingly.
“We are more in line with everyone else in the public jurisdiction. That is good for charter schools because we do have a strong population and have charter review processes that routinely require full external school evaluations,” explained Di Ninno.
Charter schools are based on a five- or 15-year contract. If the school doesn’t meet the terms of its contract, the charter will be pulled, and the school will be shut down. Improving learning and sharing practices with the public jurisdiction is essential, such that anyone who is interested in trying one of the charter schools teaching philosophies and practices can do so.
“We have a mandate to share our practices, successes, and failures,” said Di Ninno. “We also have a mandate to do research with post-secondary in an effort to improve education as a whole.”
While CAPE must teach the Alberta curriculum, how it is done is dependent on the philosophy of the school.
“Our school is based on two basic philosophical principals. One is that students learn holistically. We move away from teaching piecemeal concepts, and we teach them tied together, so integration,” said Di Ninno.
The second principle is personalization and understanding that each child comes into the school as an individual with strengths and weaknesses and a certain level of development.
“We know very well, now, that developmental areas don’t always move at the same rate, even for the same child,” explained Di Ninno. “A child may be aware of where they should be age-wise in their developmental social skills but might be struggling with anger management or decision making or might be very strong in language but not as strong in mathematics. Because of that, we massage the program for each child so it caters to the need of each child. This begins with a full assessment every September, we then add on past teachers’ comments and input, past assessments, parental input, student input and we work as a team, and they plan for the child for the year in development and implement it.”
Personalized, individualized programs for each student are well underway by the end of September. Students are reassessed throughout the year and once a child has mastered certain concepts, they move them onto others. While all programs in the school operate this way, it is particularly true for literacy and numeracy. Students are grouped not according to their grade level but to where they are at and what they need with groups changing throughout the year.
Check out capeisgreat.org for more information.
