Adriana LaGrange, photo courtesy Alberta.ca

By Erika Rolling

Education

Minister of Education on visit to Grande Prairie

Sep 26, 2022 | 12:13 PM

Alberta’s Minister of Education was in Grande Prairie last week to meet with school boards and get their input on the issues at hand for this school year in our area.

Adriana LaGrange says after spending two days in the City for meetings and opening the new Louis Riel Catholic School, there are many areas of concerns people have been telling her.

“In this area, because of the growth, looking for more capital infrastructure, more spaces. They know that we are in the planning stages right now, we are always planning for the next year.”

She notes she received three-year plans from school division in the province back in June and are being evaluated.

Challenges being experienced right now are transportation and mental health.

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“Mental health and wellness of our young people and our staff members coming out of Covid, that is top of mind for many, many school divisions if not all that I’ve spoken to,” LaGrange says.

“The issue around transportation…some of the challenges we are experiencing are particularly on recruiting and retaining school bus drivers, rising costs, inflation… those types of things.”

LaGrange says another issue province-wide is substitute teachers.

“What I do hear is that at times there seems to be shortages of substitute teachers, but right now that doesn’t seem to be as big a concern as I’ve heard in previous years when we were going through the worst of Covid.”

She says particularly Francophone and French-language teachers are in high demand right now.

A new survey by the provincial government is open to the public to give input on a new code of professional conduct for the teaching profession in Alberta.

LaGrange says it’s important to have feedback from all areas.

“You want to know what’s happening at the ground level because it is a very large education system. We have roughly about 730,000 students and roughly 9,000 staff across the province.”

“There are diverse needs from one area of the province to other areas.”

The survey is open until October 7, 2022.