Board implements Aboriginal education policy

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The Calgary Board of Education's new policy covering all aspects of Aboriginal education comes into effect on Sept. 1. The policy, which will focus on the "unique cultural, historical, and economic circumstances of Aboriginal people," will be phased in gradually.

It covers measures to calculate the success rate of Aboriginal students, an approach to acknowledging Aboriginal cultures, and it explains the roles of the school and its educators in making the policy work. Key to its success is the provision that says the superintendent of school support services will establish an advisory council to aid the implementation of the policy. Both the people who developed the policy and additional members can be members of the council.

The board's Aboriginal specialist with School Support Services, Doreen L'Hirondelle, is leaving her position to take up a new position with the Edmonton School Board in September. Her replacement will oversee the establishment of the advisory council this fall, she said.

"It's a major direction for the province, because we're the only school jurisdiction that has something like this, and we're probably one of the few school jurisdictions in Canada that have an Aboriginal policy. That's why it's significant," said L'Hirondelle. "The only other school jurisdiction that has a policy in place is Winnipeg." She added she believed Winnipeg's policy only affects its two Native schools.

She said the Calgary policy "is one that's going to be part of the whole system, not just schools. This policy is for every school in our system, in every department, in every service unit."

Three years ago next month the Calgary Chamber of Commerce's Aboriginal opportunities committee asked the Calgary Board of Education to acknowledge the need for such a policy. A presentation to the board of trustees on Sept. 17, 1997 asked for a review of professional development, curriculum, stay-in-school programs, employment equity, student life and more, that would involve everyone connected to the education of Calgary's Aboriginal students.

The committee had four goals when it brought the proposal to the board. It wanted the board "to allocate resources to Aboriginal initiatives; to integrate initiatives into the business sector; to build knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal culture, and to encourage young Aboriginal students to stay in school.'

As a result, Dr. Donna Michaels, chief superintendent of the Calgary board, initiated a wide-ranging review of practices and outcomes in her jurisdiction and in other school boards' jurisdictions, and a committee was struck to do the work.

The committee that developed the policy was composed of officials, educators, a member of the Chamber of Commerce's Aboriginal opportunities committee, and Aboriginal parents and community members.

They had few precedents to follow. They found school boards in western Canada did not have policies for Aboriginal education. The one exception was Saskatchewan's Training and Employment division, which developed a document called "Indian and Metis Education Policy for Kindergarten to Grade 12," now in use.

L"Hirondelle was asked how long the phasing-in period will be.

"That was my work, because I'm the Aboriginal specialist," she said. All of the policy work has been my work . . . I've already, along with my team, have done sessions with principal groups-it's mainly awareness-from January until June.

L'Hirondelle says she would take the information garnered from those sessions to prepare an implementation plan.

"What I'm looking at is phasing it in to (a CLC group)-they're collaborative learning communities, and they're like families of schools." She said there are eight such groups.

Over the summer L'Hirondelle's task was to determine what CLCs and service units would be involved in implementing the policy in the first year.

"The phasing in will take three to five years," she said. With more than 200 schools, she expects two or three CLCs will be inolved each year of the implementation phase.

She said there was "a whole bunch of work to be done around implementation." L'Hirondelle stressed that all schools in their system will implement the plan, even schools "that don't even have any Aboriginal kids."

That means they will build in supports to enable the schools to imlement the policy. "We'll have to look at how do we bring in resources for the curriculum; how do we evaluate resources that are already available . . . we may have to look at hiring a teacher to assist with that."

Another thing they have to consider in developing an implementation plan is the means by which they will deliver information sessions to the service units, she said.

L'Hirondelle explained what she meant by service units. "We have about three major departments in our system. (We have departments such as) environmental services, which is kind of like the whole operations and business services. That's a service unit. We have human resources . . . and we have school support services, which is the unit that I'm in." Each of the service units has its own departments and each has its own superintendent, L'Hirondelle said.