By Keith McNeill
Raft River Elementary School will go from 12 divisions to 13 in September because of the recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on class size and composition in this province, according to Lori Bradstock (Giesbrecht), the school’s new principal.
“The decision means there’s a lot of movement across B.C. as teachers who were in the north move south,” she said. “We’re seeing teachers fresh out of university going into full-time jobs, something that hasn’t happened for a long time.”
The new teaching staff includes: at Vavenby, Adam Forsyth; and at Raft River, Grade 7, Ryan Wilkes; Grade 5-6, Allison Patterson; and prep, Taylor-Rae Harvey.
Maymie Tegart will continue at Blue River after completing part of the year there last year.
Bradstock is taking over as principal at Raft River, Vavenby and Blue River schools from Shaun McKenna.
Interestingly, her teaching career began 32 years ago with one year in Blue River.
She then worked two years in Vavenby, 12 years at Dutch Lake Elementary, three years in Kamloops, followed by 1 ½ year in Australia.
After that she went back to Kamloops for several years, was vice-principal at Raft River for four years, vice-principal at Arthur Halton in Kamloops for one year, and is now back at Raft.
There were 38 students at Blue River when she taught there, she recalled, and over 100 at Vavenby.
Today both schools have less than a dozen students.
“I’m here for the foreseeable future,” she promised.
New teachers at Clearwater Secondary
Clearwater Secondary School will have at least two new staff members when classes start, according to principal Darren Coates.
“So far we have a new PE teacher, Alanna MacDonald and a new science teacher, Melissa Neubauer,” he said. “We have not yet filled our position for a new shop teacher.”
Several renovations were done over the summer, including new flooring in six rooms and the installation of three eight foot high images by former CSS student and now professional photogapher Holly Louwerse in the main hallway. The images feature local imagery and were selected by the students, who voted on six different photo options.
Lunch hour at CSS will be 10 minutes longer this year due to the one week spring break. Many students and staff found the shorter lunch hour did not leave enough time for connecting regarding extra help or intramural sports, Coates reported.