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Public School Boards Association of Alberta hosting meeting Saturday

Apr 5, 2019 | 2:55 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The Public School Boards Association of Alberta will be in Medicine Hat on Saturday, looking for feedback on how to improve education across the province.

The organization will host a public meeting in the Grandstand Banquet Room at the Medicine Hat Exhibition and Stampede at 3 p.m., sharing information about the Together For Student’s campaign.

Pat Cochrane, the campaign chair for the association, says the association is looking for feedback about one inclusive education system for all students in the province.

“Right now, we run a whole bunch of publicly-funded systems,” she said. “What if we brought them all together, we maximized our resources, and we more efficiently and effectively, delivered our public education program to our students?”

Cochrane, a former school trustee in Calgary, has presented at other conferences around the province, and says many parents have attended, and have expressed some support for the idea.

“A lot of them are saying this could make a lot of sense,” she said. “Could we then save some money on transportation, because we’re running a whole bunch of buses to a whole bunch of places that maybe we can consolidate that. Maybe we could have more specialists in the rural areas, and more focus on having more programming for kids in rural areas that, right now, because of limited resources, they’re not able to access as much.”

Cochrane says the purpose of the conversations, which will be ongoing, is to help determine the best way to move the campaign forward.

“Change starts with talking about things,” she said. “We don’t expect this to be in place in September, that would be impossible, but if we could have the conversation, and get people thinking a different way, instead of saying ‘this is the way it is,’ instead saying ‘Is this the way it has to be?’ Could we do better by our children and our young people, if we brought everyone together under one inclusive system?”