School District 78 creates new 5-year strategic plan

The Fraser Cascade School District 78 (SD78) will be updating their strategic plan to better meet the needs of their students. 

And there will be an opportunity for public input on it in the future. 

“In a nutshell, from an educational lens, what we’re trying to focus on and improve upon is engagement,” said Balan Moorthy, SD78’s superintendent. “We do know our literacy levels are not where we would like them to be, and neither are our numeracy levels. And we’re looking to find (someone) that can help us with a model, or a campaign, or a learning pro-systematic plan, or working through our schools in our community, to deal with the whole issue of sleep hygiene.” 

In addition to literacy, numeracy, and sleep hygiene, Moorthy also said that the plan would look into supporting their students from Indigenous communities, especially students who live on-reserve; forty per cent of SD78’s student population is Indigenous and come from many Indigenous communities in the area. 

This population percentage ties into research currently being done by Paola Ashton, from PRA Communications; the school district is currently working with Ashton to develop and update their plan. Ashton previously worked with the Chilliwack School District to update their strategic plan. According to Ashton, while both districts have similar goals, concerns, and challenges, the main difference between the two is that SD78 has a larger number of First Nation communities that make up its student population. 

The plan will also be looking at the needs of students from other communities, that are part of SD78, and implementing strategies/policies that will also help to support them. 

As SD78 is comprised of communities from Agassiz, Harrison, Hope, Yale and Boston Bar, one of the challenges Moorthy anticipates is making sure that all communities feel heard and supported by the new plan. This, he said, will require more work on their part as many of these communities are located far from each other (one of the district’s school, Q’aLaTKu7em Community School, is located four and a half hours northwest of Hope). 

“The important thing to know about the strategic plan is it’s very broad based, and going into very important directions. But within the strategic plan, each community has a voice,” Moorthy said. Part of the strategic plan ties to the framework for enhancing student learning, which is found in our compliance document where we talk about everything that we do. 

“Within that compliance document, each community will be reporting on their own goals and directions. So, most of our schools have a goal on Indigenous education, whether that’s improving cultural understanding or performance. I think all of them have a numeracy and a literacy goal, and then they have (more unique or individual goals focused on) social and emotional development.” 

Another challenge is ensuring that, in terms of Indigenous support, both on-reserve and off-reserve students get equal opportunities to access support workers and resources. 

According to SD78 Chairperson Linda Kerr, the district is hoping to have a first draft of the updated plan by Spring 2025. Once this draft is created, the public will be given a chance to view it and provide their input on it. 

“It basically means we look at everything over again and see if we need to cut or or add to it,” Kerr said. “And then, even though it seems a little bit backwards, we are going to take a document to the public, after we’ve got a kind of a framework. We’ll see where we’ve erred, and what we need to incorporate, what we need to change, and where we need to add other things. 

“But, we still want to keep it really slim and and direct, because it’s been my experience that people don’t want to read 45 or 50 pages worth of stuff.”