Saskatchewan schools face growing pressures as classes resume

As students return to Saskatchewan classrooms this week, educators are preparing for another year of growing pressures.

Education Minister Everett Hindley said the province is making progress through specialized support programs and classroom-complexity teachers, but acknowledged more work is needed.

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“Every student is unique in terms of their needs and some of the challenges they may face,” Hindley said.

He said some teachers and educational assistants feel they lack the training or tools needed to support students with complex learning, behavioural or medical needs.

Teacher recruitment is also becoming a broader concern. Hindley said vacancies are becoming difficult to fill beyond northern and remote communities, pointing to challenges in Swift Current.

Saskatchewan School Boards Association president Sean Davidson said the issues vary significantly among the province’s 27 divisions.

Urban schools are dealing with overcrowding, while northern divisions face higher operating costs and challenges finding housing for teachers. Rural divisions are often responsible for older buildings and long student bus rides.

“We want every student in this province to succeed, regardless of where they live or what their personal circumstances are,” Davidson said.

He added that school boards need enough funding and local flexibility to respond to the different challenges facing their communities.

NDP questions government transparency on school conditions

The official Opposition is alleging concerns that the provincial government isn’t taking students’ studies seriously enough as the new school year gets underway.

“We know that teachers and school staff have been preparing for days and weeks to give students a warm welcome today, but we also know that in classrooms across the province, students are returning to classrooms that are overcrowded, that are complex, schools that are over capacity, and our team has been putting in the work over the last number of months to gather more information on the state of Saskatchewan schools,” said Matt Love, education critic with the Saskatchewan NDP.

Love said the NDP has been seeking information on the state of schools in the province to “better understand and advocate for where new schools are needed.”

Speaking in Brighton — a Saskatoon neighbourhood where thousands live but no school has been built — Love said the response his party received was “160 blank pages from the Government of Saskatchewan.”

“They’re so blank that you could write a book on these pages,” Love quipped.

He said the people of Saskatchewan deserve transparency on the state of schools in the province and what is required for a school to be built or improvements made.

Rather than the blank pages received, Love said the NDP was seeking information on work the government began around 2021, assessing the condition of every school in Saskatchewan.

“We know that roughly one third of schools in Saskatchewan were deemed to be in poor or critical condition, so we sought to get that information, and this is what we got back,” Love said, displaying the pages.

He said no explanation was given for why the information was redacted.

In a statement, the Government of Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Education said it received a freedom of information (FOI) request and provided a response “to the applicant in accordance with The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.”

The ministry noted that “redactions within the records were made under provisions of the legislation,” saying the applicant was given information that identified the sections relied on by the legislation for the redactions.

“The ministry is committed to meeting its obligations under FOI legislation while also protecting information that is exempt from disclosure under the Act,” the province stated in its response on Wednesday afternoon.

—with files from 650 CKOM’s Libby Gray