The wheels on school buses began going round and round again today.
It was day one for most students across the province.
Anglophone East School District Superintendent Randolph MacLEAN says thousands are transported each day, “That grows and changes daily. Each time a student enrolls, that potentially increases the number of students we bus each day. That’s a moving target; it’s between 15,000 and 16,000 each day.”
As for enrollment, over 20,000 were registered when Tuesday began, but MacLEAN expected that number would rise by the end of the day. “What will my final prediction be? We’ll settle somewhere between 20,600 and 20,800. Last year we had around 20,200, so that’s another 600 students.”
MacLEAN says the first day of a new school year is always his favourite.
A new pilot project to be implemented in 11 Anglophone East schools will add 10 PD days for teachers.
Those schools are Petitcodiac Regional, Queen Elizabeth, Havelock, Magnetic Hill, Maplehurst, Northrop Frye, Salisbury Elementary, Salisbury Regional, Beaverbrook, Birchmount, and Harrison Trimble High.
MacLEAN says the teacher has the greatest impact on the student, “We continue to develop a professional development plan that responds to our district improvement plan, literacy, numeracy, safe and caring and graduation, as well as a school improvement plan which dovetails that and looking at student achievement data and how we continue to improve top quality instruction assessment and supports for all of our students, and that will provide time for our staff to do that work that they otherwise have not had in previous years.”
