Dear Banff Trail School Families,
I hope that this past Family Day Weekend provided some opportunities for you to spend some quality time together, whether that be via chatting, cooking, going for a walk around our (frigid!) city, or engaging in one of the many free, fun, family events that were held in Calgary on Monday. Though there are many venues around our city for you to enjoy with your family, schools are also an important component of the community (especially when you have children attending them). Daily, staff at Banff Trail School make a sincere, heartfelt effort to create a learning environment within which students can learn and feel loved, but we acknowledge that there is, and always will be, areas in which we can improve. The CBE charts out outcomes and actions that it looks to uplift in its Education Plan, and in turn, each school creates a School Development Plan to help guide improvements at a more local level.
There are many factors that we use to determine the ways in which we can improve at our school level. Thank you to the many students, families and staff who recently completed the recent Program Monitoring survey; this was a voluntary CBE pilot program that will offer some excellent insight into our school and French Immersion programming. We also have other surveys that we conduct, including the Alberta Education Assurance Survey for our grade 4 students and families, and the OurSchool Survey for our grades 4 and 5 students. There are others, but these are just to name a few that can provide us with some insight.
Yearly, at this time of year, Principals are also asked to offer a presentation about our school budget, fees, and our School Development Plan, which I presented at our most recent School Council evening. As a part of this presentation, we also ask for feedback about school fees and planning. Knowing that not all families are able to attend our School Council evenings, I welcome anyone else in our parent community to also complete this very short engagement here. It will remain open until March 5th, 2025. There is also a CBE video available that speaks to school planning that you may choose to view.
Thank you for the varied, ongoing input into what we do at our school; it is all read, analyzed, considered, and valued.
For your consideration:
Labour Action: On Feb. 19, 2025, the CBE received 72 hours’ strike notice from CUPE Local 40. This means CUPE Local 40 intends to withdraw its services effective Monday, Feb. 24, 2025. At Banff Trail, this includes our Facility Operators. During any strike action, CBE is prioritizing in-person learning. All CBE schools and buildings will remain open and classes will continue. However, a strike will have an impact on schools and operations. Staff and families have been directed to the labour action web page to monitor the evolving situation.
Bell Times: As previously mentioned, our school bell times had been off by 1 minute and 11 seconds. This has now been fixed. Bell times should now align more closely to the times on our cell phones. Note, however, that this timing may once again ‘drift’, as experienced by our school’s timing system, and we’ll continue to try to keep it as close to accurate as possible.
Clubs: Thank you again to all Teachers for volunteering their lunch hour time to run our clubs this year. Our grade 3 to 5 clubs ended this week, and next week marks the beginning of lunch hour clubs for our grade 1 and 2 students. We’re looking forward to it!
Triwood Arena Skating: Thank you to our wonderful School Council for again providing funds for our school to go skating at Triwood Arena. Permission and information forms will be sent home in the coming 1-2 weeks, as we will begin skating in the first days of March. If you are able to help your child’s class with this trip, please connect with your child’s teacher; it takes many hands to make this experience happen.
Carnaval: Thank you to our Carnaval committee (Mme Jessica, Mme Vicky, M Jonathan) and Mme Sophie for assembling our Carnaval festivities last week; it was a busy week, but it’s always a priority to bring in some authentic French cultural events to our school. Once again, a big thank you to our School Council for funding these festivities.
Theme Day: On Wednesday, February 26th, we will be hosting our annual Pink Shirt Day theme day. We encourage all students, staff and families to wear pink in recognition of this important “bullying awareness” day.
Upcoming Dates:
Feb 24-Mar 20: Grade 1&2 Clubs
Friday, February 28: Non-Instructional Day, no school for students (Staff working with Anita Crowshoe)
March 3-7: Skating at Triwood Arena
Thursday, March 20: Learning conferences 3-7pm
Friday, March 21: Learning conferences 8am-1pm, no school for students
Saturday, March 22 to Sunday, March 30, inclusive: Spring Break, School closed
Monday, March 31: School resumes
Have a wonderful weekend together,
Ryan Turner
Principal, Banff Trail School