In order to save the Wolf Creek Public Schools school division approximately $65,000 annually, the division’s home education program has been essentially disbanded.
“I’m redrafting the home education admin procedure to move us out of that particular process,” said superintendent Larry Jacobs.
“I’m down to having almost everybody in a blended program,” he added.
Jacobs says he needed the resources and skills tied up in the home education program to move literacy and numeracy forward. “It’s a very expensive program and it doesn’t have a lot of people that are participating in it.”
In closing the program, Jacobs made sure the students involved had other opportunities in the division or were directed to other cyber programs. “So that’s why I had them working in Outreaches, or there’s schools in a blended program, which is part home, part school.”
Divisions granted school closing power
School boards have recently been granted to authority to close down schools based on their own administrative procedures.
“I talked to a number of superintendents and I’m going to probably start building one (procedure) in the next six months,” said Jacobs.
WCPS already has a similar process, which Jacobs is going to expand upon. When closing a school, the division begins with an internally developed viability assessment, then follow with the provincial procedure.
“The closing of a school is very unique to a school division and a community,” said Jacobs. He added it was too cumbersome and inefficient to have a generic, province- wide procedure.