French immersion students in the Campbell River School District will have a dedicated distributed learning program this year.
Associate Superintendent Morgan Kyle said the district was finalizing the program details for those students.
“I want to assure the public that we are absolutely looking into supporting those families that have made that decision and we have been for some time,” she said.
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Kyle said the infrastructure for a distributed or remote learning French immersion program has not been in place before due to a lack of demand. The district is working to find teachers that can teach the program, as well as put the infrastructure into place. They’re also working with other districts to see what programs may already be in place, but there’s not much.
“As you can well imagine, it’s a language-based program, so looking at how are we going to build this so that we are improving and providing the immersion experience remotely,” she said. “It’s a little bit more challenging, obviously, than in class.”
Kyle said the district was still gathering information about how many French immersion students would be interested in the program.
“We’re still working on it,” she said. “We’re confident that we’ll be able to meet the majority of the needs, if not all, but there is absolutely a plan in place for that.”
One-tenth of elementary students doing distributed learning
Just over 10 per cent of the district’s elementary and middle school students have opted for a remote learning option this year.
Superintendent Jeremy Morrow said the district was looking at using a portion of nearly $1-million in federal Safe Return to Class funds to hire additional eBlend and eBos teachers. The staffing boost would mean that school staffing would remain unchanged and could allow for a reduction in class sizes of about 10 per cent.
The district said it still doesn’t know how many secondary students will be choosing in-class learning over distributed learning or other options this year.
No registration limit for distributed learning
At the beginning of September, the school district said it was receiving a high volume of registrations for its eBlend and eBos programs. It said that there would be no registration limit for the programs and that all SD72 students would be accepted.
The district has committed to pairing distributed learning students with their teachers no later than Sept. 21.
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