Changes recommended for troubled school division

The troubled Northland School Division has great potential to improve aboriginal education in northern Alberta, but only if it embraces change, the chairman of an inquiry team said Monday.

"Northland has proven over the last three decades to be a pretty change-resistant kind of organization and for the improvements that need to come with student learning, Northland needs to become a force for and a driver of change," Dave van Tamelen said.

The inquiry team's report into how to improve the Northland School Division was released Monday.

The three-member team was appointed a year ago after Education Minister Dave Hancock fired the entire 23-member board of trustees over concerns about high staff turnover and poor student achievement in the division, which serves mostly First Nations and Mtis students in northern Alberta.

The province will name a community-based team to analyze and respond to the report's 48 recommendations. Hancock said it's important to have parents and community leaders involved.

"I can't go in and fix a community or tell a community what's wrong with it, or any of those things. That would be paternalistic and offensive," Hancock said.

"What we need to do is to sit down with the communities and say, 'What is it going to take for our children to succeed? What does it need from the community? What does it need from the school?'"

The recommendations contained in the report focus on student achievement, administration, governance and funding, with an emphasis on theneed for Northland to adoptnew leadership and administrative systems.

Term limits proposed for school board

The report also recommends the province kick-in "catch-up" money to allow Northland to upgrade its aging facilities and libraries, which are scattered over 23 remote communities in the northern part of the province.

The report urges Alberta Educationto include mandatory reviews every three years as part of the implementation process.

If there is no progress at the nine-year mark, "then the need for further interventions, including possible radical boundary change, should be reconsidered."

The team recommends Northland be governed by a smaller board, whose nine members can serve no longer than two consecutive three-year terms.

A term limit "would ensure effective representation from throughout the system over time and to minimize the potential of factional politics and inappropriate concentrations of power," the report states.

The minister of education would appoint a non-voting board member to serve as an observer and facilitator

The report also recommends that the hiring and firing of staff lie with school board management with community input.

"It must cease to be regarded as a governance function separate to political processes," the document says.

The report also emphasizes a need for the board to focus on developing proficiency in English andmathematical reasoning, better student attendance and improved parental engagement with the school system.

Northland also must strengthen the aboriginal content in the curriculum, it said.

The report also recommends the Anzac School transferto the Fort McMurray Public School Division and Red Earth Creek Schoolmoveto the Peace River School Division. The school in Keg River should be closedbecause ofdecliningenrolment,the report says.