Howatt hired to help schools meet future challenges

The Canadian Rockies Public Schools (CRPS) division has tagged one of its own to make sure that a year's worth of hard work does not come to naught.

On Friday (May 2) the CRPS announced it has hired Sonja Howatt, currently coordinator of the Outreach program, as Implementation Facilitator, a newly-created one-year position designed to ensure that the key recommendations to come from the Futures Planning Group Inspiring Hearts and Minds are put into motion.

Howatt will assume the new position for the 2008/2009 school year.

"Sonja is the right person for this role," said CRPS board chair Kim Bater. "She has been part of this process from the beginning, and has been involved in the planning of every session.

"It is crucial we have a current staff member in this leadership position and she is ideal for that."

Bater said the job would entail taking some of the key ideas that will go forward to the board from the FPG planning group and putting them into action.

"Some will be immediate and some will be put into development for the future, so the momentum and ideas are able to be experimented with and implemented and refined over time."

Howatt, who has been with the CRPS for 10 years, has represented the CCHS teachers on the 20-member FPG planning group for the past year.

Her work developing and administering the Outreach programs and her volunteer work on the Elizabeth Rummel Elementary School's Healthy School committee has fed her belief in the need to educate the whole child and meet needs that go beyond academic, she said.

"There are a lot of kids who aren't engaged, for whom school is not relevant. If we are not meeting their social and emotional needs, very little learning takes place. I have been very excited and privileged to take part in the Futures Planning process because I truly believe we need to change the way education is delivered."

However, Howatt said it's tough to walk away from the Outreach program, if only for a year.

"I am leaving something I love doing. This is very hard - I love the kids."

Outreach offers high school courses to students for whom the academic schedule or environment doesn't work.

"We have a lot of athletes who fit courses in around their training schedule, we have kids taking courses that don't fit their timetables, kids redoing a course for the marks, kids who have left school for whatever reason, kids who have been bullied, who have to work full-time..."

The Futures Planning Group was launched by the CRPS board last June. Over the fall and winter there have been three phases of the process: determining core community values, examining trends and forces affecting education today, and drafting key directions for the future. Each phase has been accompanied by public speakers, community forums, teachers' forums and sometimes student forums. On-line questionnaires have been available for those unable to attend the forums.

The final community forum to recommend key directions has just finished and the FPG planning group will now begin to assimilate the information and prepare a report of recommendations for the board.

Funding for the new position has been provided by the provincial government, which awarded CRPS $200,000 in one-time funding to participate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Schools for Tomorrow initiative, and to ensure that the local futures planning initiatives are able to be acted upon.

CRPS is only one of two school divisions in Canada, and the only one in Alberta, invited to participate in the OECD project.