January 21st, 2024 

Sam Shaw – Parent Message  

Good afternoon and happy Sunday to our Sam Shaw families out there today. It looks like we weathered our cold snap as we return to some more reasonable weather this week. Once again, we would like to thank our parents for their support during this time. 

We would like to thank those parents who were able to make our Parent Council meeting this past week. At the meeting, we discussed the exciting opportunities we have regarding staffing additions to the school. The provincial government has recently provided additional funds to school boards across the province. The CBE has seen significant growth in our student population and as a result we were the recipient of some additional funding to help with our pressure points. We will be adding 2 additional teachers to our staff and as a result we will be creating some additional instructional groups to help with some class size realities. We have some class sizes in the mid-to-high 30’s, and we feel we can bring those down to 30/31 as an average. Staff will be meeting this coming week to look at the impact of this opportunity. We will then connect next week with students identified and with their parents to have their feedback in the process. When looking to create new instructional groups we will use some of the following aspects to guide our thinking: 

• We will look to move students in pairs and triples to ensure that they have a friend 

• We will look to move students that would benefit from a new grouping 

• We will look to move students that are able to handle the transition at this time 

• We will ensure there is continuity of the academic program that students are in right now 

Once the new groupings have been created by the teachers, we will connect with the students identified individually and get their input to the possible move. We will then contact parents to get your feedback. We see this as a chance to impact student learning in good ways as we have the 2nd half of the year left in learning. Having gone through this process in previous settings I want to reinforce with our parent community there will be tremendous care and thought applied throughout this opportunity. We are looking at a February 5th start date for the new groupings. As we hire the new staff to Sam Shaw I will ensure that we send out a message to our community. 

We also discussed the opportunity to host a Career Day for our students later this school year. our Parent Council expressed excitement for this opportunity. Stay tuned for more updates as we look to canvas our parents / students for a sense of careers we want to expose our students to. We will also be looking to come to our community to look for guest speakers for this opportunity. These are exciting initiatives that we know can have a positive impact for our students.  

Again, please stay warm out there. 

Terry / Shannon 

Parent Council Meeting Dates 

Feb 15 - no meeting due to Teacher's convention 

Mar 21 – At Sam Shaw 

Apr 18 - TBD 

May 16 - TBD 

June 20 - TBD 

On the Horizon  

January 25th – Last Day of classes for semester #1 complimentary  

January 29th – 1st Day of classes for semester #2 complimentary 

January 30th – Report Cards live for parents viewing online 

February 15th – Teacher’s Convention 

February 16th – Teacher’s Convention 

February 19th – Family Day 

March 15th – Learning Packages sent home 

March 21st – Last Day of Classes before Spring Break 

March 21st – Meet the Teacher – Evening 4:30 – 8:00pm 

• To be booked online 

March 22nd – Meet the Teacher – Day 8:00 – 1:00pm 

• To be booked online 

March 23rd – April 1st – Spring Break