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Your source for local news, sports, weather and entertainment. www.thenownews.com
Lineups for French immersion classes Parents camped out at Glen Elementary this week as they tried to secure a spot for their kids in the school’s French immersion kindergarten class. Assistant superintendent Sylvia Russell said the Coquitlam school has limited space so it will likely have only one French immersion kindergarten class next year. “It’s a bit of a problem for us because we just have too many kids living in that catchment area for French and English to be able to put them all into that beautiful brand new building,” Russell said Tuesday. “It just doesn’t fit all of them, so there’s a little bit of an adjustment that probably needs to go on there in terms of the boundaries.” A first-come, first-served registration system is currently in place, but the school district might switch to a lottery draw for French immersion kindergarten next year at Glen Elementary — as well as at other high-demand schools such as Panorama and Glenayre. “There are a few French immersion schools where the parents do line up, and we’re considering using a lottery draw system next year for those schools,” Russell said. “Typically we’ve used a lottery for whole programs. We haven’t done it on a schoolby-school basis, but we’re getting to a point where we might consider that.” In late January, the school district held lottery draws for its Montessori and bilingual Mandarin kindergarten programs. The Mandarin program attracted 80 applicants for 40 kindergarten spots. The school district may consider expanding the program in the future, Russell said. CONT. ON PAGE 4, see ‘PEOPLE.’
Paul vanPeenen/NOW
WORKIN’ ON THE RAILROAD: A Canadian Pacific Railway employee does track maintenance near the Murray Street overpass in Port Moody.
Tri-Cities schools rank No. 1 to 797 Fraser Institute compiles controversial annual “report card” dismissed by educators Stories by Jennifer McFee jmcfee@thenownews.com “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” This Albert Einstein quote comes to mind for Coquitlam Teachers’ Association president Teresa Grandinetti when she discusses the annual foundation skills assessments (FSAs). A quote posted on the Fraser Institute’s school report cards website offers the opposite view: “If it matters … measure it.” The Fraser Institute released its B.C. elementary school rankings Monday, based on last year’s provincially mandated FSAs. Each year, Grade 4 and 7
students throughout the province write this set of tests in reading, writing and numeracy over a fourweek period. The right-wing think tank then uses 10 key indicators derived from FSA results to rank B.C. schools. For the 2009-10 school year, Queen of All Saints in Coquitlam scored perfect marks, along with a dozen other top-ranking schools across the province. In the Tri-Cities, Our Lady of the Assumption ranked next highest in 41st place out of 874 B.C. schools, followed by Our Lady of Fatima (53rd place), Hope Lutheran (57th place) and Panorama Heights (147th place). At 797th place, the lowest ranked Tri-Cities school is Alderson Elementary, where 44.9 per cent of students did not write the test. Next lowest are Central
and Glen elementaries (tied at 783rd), trailing behind Glenayre, Lord Baden-Powell and Westwood (all tied at 743rd). However, Grandinetti said this ranking system can have a negative impact on schools. It would be more effective to use FSA results to examine the curriculum for areas of improvement, she said. “When the tests were first created, it was never about ranking schools. It was always about looking at curriculum and how to improve curriculum,” Grandinetti said. “So when you start ranking, then you start getting kids ready to write a test rather than looking at what the curriculum is doing.” The ranking system doesn’t consider school CONTINUED ON PAGE 4, see ‘IT’S A SNAPSHOT.’
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