Superintendent of school Cheryl Gilmore issued her progress report at the August Horizon school board meeting and the academic off-season was still whirling with activity.
The report highlighted the July 7 announcement from the Minister of Education Dave Hancock providing a 2.92 per cent increase for teacher’s salaries which affected Horizon’s budget.
The budget committee met in May and worked with the board to forward a recommendation for deficit budget of $420,000 without and reduction to staffing formulas and funding the budget through reserves as a one-year solution.
With the announcement, the budget will be altered factoring in final enrollment numbers for Horizon schools expected by the end of September.
Hirings highlight new faces
The progress report also highlighted that of the 32 teaching positions that have been filled to date for the 2010-2011 school year, 14 of them are by teachers new to the Horizon school division. The new teachers attended a teacher orientation on Monday and also had an orientation to the Horizon Induction Program along with their mentors on Tuesday.
Direction of education
In mid-June, Alberta Education released its Inspiring Action on Education Discussion Paper and had a summer-long campaign in seeking feedback with its stakeholders with input surveys.
Four of the six surveys have already been released including Inspiring Action Overall Survey (June 15), Parental and Community Engagement (June 15), Collaboration and Shared Governance (Aug. 3) and Learning Environment. Teaching Our Children (Sept. 14) and Competencies of an Educated Albertan (Oct. 5) still have to be released. Gilmore encouraged stakeholders to participate in the online surveys that can be found on the Alberta Education Web site on the homepage at http://engage.education.alberta.ca.