Learning, inclusion, mental health top Edmonton Public Schools education plan
As the division prepares to welcome over 120,000 students in the upcoming school year, the final year's plan aims to guide efforts across the division, remaining focused on enhancing pathways to success for all students.
Each year, EPSB submits a Four-Year Education Plan to Alberta Education, aligning it with the approved budget.
The plan is developed using data, stakeholder engagement, provincial planning documents, and the division's own strategic plan. Progress on the plan's actions will be reported in fall 2025 through the Annual Education Results Report (AERR) and results review process.
Brought before trustees for approval on Friday, the plan outlines the division's strategic goals and provincial assurance framework, reporting cycles, and funding manual for the 2025–2026 school year.
The plan is built around three key priority areas.
Under 'Priority One: Outstanding learning opportunities,' the division is focused on helping teachers implement new curriculum to build on outstanding learning opportunities for all students, the report said.
For example, targeted professional learning and resources for Kindergarten to grade 6 teachers has been well received, with 84 per cent of certificated staff who accessed support saying it was helpful, according to Division Feedback Survey (DFS) results.
The plan emphasizes evidence-based strategies to support strong literacy and numeracy outcomes and ensures learning remains responsive to the needs of all students. Experiential opportunities will also help students explore and plan for their futures.
Under 'Priority Two: Anti-racism and reconciliation,' the Division reaffirms its commitment to anti-racism, reconciliation, and equity by engaging with staff, students, families, and community members.
Select DFS results from students, staff and families shows strong perceptions of diversity, with:
78.5 per cent of grades 4 to 12 students agree that many diverse cultures are represented in the books and materials at their school;
89.3 per cent of staff share this view; and
86 per cent of families agree that many diverse cultures are represented in the events, activities, and environment of their child's school.
EPSB Superintendent Darrel Robertson acknowledged concerns from those who feel dissatisfied with the influence of advisory committees such as the equity advisory committee, and that he's 'really interested in to hear what folks have to say in terms of that work and what's happening,' but noting the division must prioritize complex work over time.
'Sometimes that work doesn't move as fast as people would like, so they may walk away with feelings of dissatisfaction… It doesn't mean that their contribution isn't valuable. It's just that we need to be realistic in terms of how it is that we sequentially move this very complicated work forward and what we prioritize,' he said.
'There are folks that are very set on inclusion is the only option for children with complex needs to participate in our public education system,' he added. 'But we also know that that parent choice is very important to many, many others. So having that singular idea of how things can work can sometime lead people down the road of walking away from the experience being less satisfied than what they anticipated,' he said.
Under 'Priority Three: Mental health and wellbeing,' the division said promoting student and staff well-being remains a central focus of the plan, outlining efforts to strengthen school communities that foster a sense of belonging, safety, and success. Collaboration with external partners will guide the strategic use of resources to support these goals.
Select DFS results show students' positive feelings of belonging and safety, with:
63.2 per cent of Grades 4 to 12 students agree that their school is a place where all students feel like they belong;
70.7 per cent of students feel like they belong at their school; and
74 per cent of students feel safe at school.
cnguyen@postmedia.com
Understanding the 2025-2026 budget for Edmonton Public Schools: What's changing and why it matters
Edmonton Public Schools reviews annual class size report amid growing enrolment pressures
Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don't miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
What the U.S. dairy industry really wants from Canada
U.S. dairy producers insist they're not looking for Canada to dismantle its supply management system, but they do want Canada to follow the letter and spirit of the existing deal that governs the dairy trade between the two countries. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted Canada as "unfair" and "ripping us off" with massive dairy tariffs, in a way that isn't fully accurate. However, senior figures in the U.S. dairy industry are concerned there's also some misrepresentation happening north of the border, creating a false perception of what U.S. producers are actually seeking in terms of access to the Canadian market. Shawna Morris, executive vice-president for trade policy and global affairs with the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, says it's not true that her industry wants Canada to abandon its system for protecting the dairy sector. "We've never been out to eliminate Canada's supply management," said Morris in an interview from her office in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington. "It's much easier to create a boogeyman and fear-mongering around that being the goal of the Americans, but that's certainly not what our industry has advocated." Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice-president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association lobby group, says she recognizes the Trump administration has been "fairly abrasive" in its tone toward Canada. "But at the same time, I think we feel pretty ignored by Canada in terms of our legitimate trade concerns." Two main trade irritants According to Morris and Rasdall Vargas, the U.S. industry has two main irritants with Canada: how the Canadian government allocates the existing quotas for tariff-free imports of dairy products, and how Canadian milk producers dump cheap milk protein into the international market. The import quotas negotiated under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, which Americans call USMCA) are designed to give U.S. producers tariff-free access worth roughly 3.5 per cent of Canada's domestic demand for dairy products. "Three per cent is pretty limited," said Morris. "It's certainly not a situation where our industry is gonna come in and take over the Canadian dairy market." CUSMA sets import quotas for 14 categories of dairy products. That allows an annual volume of each category to enter Canada tariff-free, and any imports exceeding the quota would get hit with sky-high tariffs of 200 per cent or more. Canada's rationale for this is ensuring the domestic dairy industry thrives by effectively capping how much the U.S. can export each year, preventing cheaper American products from dominating the market. The U.S. government supports its dairy sector with hefty direct subsidies. The U.S. dairy industry says it's not asking for Canada's quotas to be increased or the tariff rates to be decreased. Rather, it wants changes to how Ottawa allocates the quotas: more specifically, who gets them. Big Canadian dairies dominate import quotas Much of the quota volume is allocated to major Canadian-owned dairy processing companies such as Saputo and Agropur. Industry analysts on both sides of the border say such companies have little incentive to import U.S. products that would compete with their own. According to the U.S. producers, this restricts their access to the Canadian market. Their evidence for that claim: Canadian trade statistics showing tariff-free imports from the U.S. have almost never reached the quota limits in any category. WATCH | What Donald Trump gets wrong (and right) about Canada's dairy tariffs: "For five years, Canada's been playing games with these tariff rate quotas," said Morris. "That's a lot of volume that should have been able to reach Canadian consumers." Despite those complaints, Canada's imports of U.S. dairy products have risen significantly since the CUSMA quotas took effect in 2020. Those imports totalled $897 million in 2024, according to Statistics Canada data, more than four times the value of imports in any year before 2020. "Trade certainly should be far higher than it is," said Morris. "That was what USMCA promised to deliver and quite frankly has fallen far short." A key change the U.S. producers would like to see is for Canada to grant retailers and the food-service sector a share of the tariff-free quotas, allowing them to import some U.S. dairy products directly. The U.S. industry also wants Canada to be far stricter in taking away allocations from importers that fail to use their full quota in a given year. While a bill that Parliament passed in June bars Ottawa from agreeing to raise the dairy import quotas or lower the tariffs, it doesn't prevent other changes to the system, leaving Canadian trade negotiators some wiggle room. WATCH | Canada's supply management system, explained: 'An inherent mismatch' The other chief complaint from the U.S. focuses on Canada's cheap exports of milk proteins, also described as milk solids, such as skim milk powder. The Americans argue that because Canada's supply management system keeps domestic prices artificially high, Canada can sell its excess production of milk proteins internationally at artificially low prices, undercutting the competition. "It frankly makes no sense that you could have one of the highest milk prices in the world and yet be exporting dairy protein at some of the lowest prices globally," said Morris. "That's just an inherent mismatch." Canada's pricing of milk solids for the export market is currently the subject of a U.S. International Trade Commission investigation, ordered by the Trump administration, with a hearing scheduled for Monday. Dairy Farmers of Canada declined a request for comment on the case. "During the recent election, all major parties expressed support for supply management and stated that it would be off the table in upcoming trade negotiations," the organization said in a news release in June. The Trump administration is not the first to accuse Canada of breaching CUSMA terms on dairy. Joe Biden's administration twice took legal action over Canada's handling of the dairy quotas, claiming it was unfairly undermining U.S. access to the Canadian market. The U.S. won the first dispute, which it launched in 2021, but failed to win the second, in 2023. Now in 2025, Rasdall Vargas says her industry wants Canada to be willing to hear its true concerns and do something about them. "Ultimately, when we have a trading partner who isn't taking our concerns seriously until they're threatened to do so, it's also not a good feeling from our side," she said. Whatever anyone thinks about Trump's bluster on Canadian dairy, Rasdall Vargas believes it's having an impact. "I think that's the president's way of having our back, probably more abrasively than Canada would like," she said. "I will say I've never seen Canadian dairy interests take U.S. concerns about Canadian dairy policy more seriously than in the past six months."
Wall Street Journal
6 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
Canada's Aluminum Subsidies Hurt the U.S.
Ed Fast, Canada's former minister for international trade, claims that, 'We don't subsidize vast state-owned industries' ('Canada Is the Best Friend America's Got,' op-ed, July 21). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development disagrees in an independent report, which found that Canada's aluminum industry is supported by more than $850 million in government subsidies.
Washington Post
8 hours ago
- Washington Post
Trump's demand for Washington NFL team name change ignores years of psychological data, experts say
This week, President Donald Trump threatened to hold up a new stadium deal if Washington's NFL team did not restore its name to a racial slur, despite decades of psychological research showing the negative mental health impacts of Native American mascots. The president is demanding a private company change its name to something that researchers have linked to a variety of negative mental health outcomes, particularly for children, said Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians. The organization has been pushing back on stereotypes of Native Americans since the 1950s, including Native sports mascots.
