INNISFAIL - A newly-formed ad hoc committee made up of Chinook’s Edge School Division (CESD) trustees will seek out collaborative and alternative funding models for the support of student health in the division, says chair Holly Bilton.
Officially called the Health Committee, the panel was officially launched by trustees at the Oct. 8 board meeting. It is made up of trustees Kathy Kemmere, DeAnne Hutchinson and Terry Leslie, with Bilton also an ex-officio member.
The 11,167-student CESD is headquartered in Innisfail and has schools across the region.
The committee will investigate options on a new delivery model for health-related supports for students and investigate other opportunities for health-related advocacy, she said.
“The key to the advocacy around the funding model is that has been a number of areas where we have been using instructional dollars to help solve health concerns,” Bilton told the Albertan.
“One example would be the Family School Wellness program, which we support in the neighbourhood of $2 million division-wide. Historically it has been shared in multiple different ways and the contribution was significantly less.”
Student health needs include speech pathology, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and mental health, she said.
“We will be asking our (Education) ministry, the Health ministry, Child and Family Services ministry, where can we support them in bringing people into our schools and having them available,” she said. “Where can we make sure that families and children have access to care and how do we get that to them?
“I think of our more rural locations specifically where there is not a local community person that they can go to, so they are asked to go to urban centres or maybe even Calgary. When those things happen that’s hard for a family, so where are we able to support those ministries?”
A year ago the CESD board created a document about board advocacy and the first recommendation was a cross-ministry advocacy effort to address the complex health needs of students.
“There are a lot of ministries that touch kids, so how do we make sure that all of this ministries are working together so that the families can easily access the support that they need, so that we have really health kids,” she said.
The committee has not been given a deadline to report back to the board.
“Our process is that they will have meetings and they will try to also start to look at meetings with appropriate people who will allow us to come advocate to them,” she said.
Committee members Leslie, Kemmere and Hutchinson all have a passion for student health, she said.
In other news from the Oct. 8 board meeting, trustees approved the hiring of Leaders International to lead the search for a new superintendent for the division.
Current superintendent Kurt Sacher has announced his retirement at the end of the 2024-25 school year.
