The Weyburn Comprehensive School board on Monday approved a new scholarship offered to the school. This is the second scholarship award received by the school this month.

The Julianne Mackenzie Scholarship Award was unanimously approved by the board after it was applied for by Rick Mackenzie. The award is worth $1,000 and will be offered every year for 10 years. Julianne died recently while serving in the Armed Forces, and a fund was set up in her memory. She was a well-known personality in Weyburn, and is a Comp graduate. The criteria for the student who will win the award is, someone who, like Julianne, has good academic achievement, participates in sports, and has community involvement.

The other award in memory of D. Goski had been approved earlier and has already been forwarded to student services. It is also worth $1,000 every year for five years.

The Director of Education Jan Chell informed the board that they will be sending three people to the Dufour Conference in Prince Albert from March 14 to 16. She said that the conference addresses how the school system in Saskatchewan works and how educators can use it to the maximum benefit for students and themselves.

"This conference is specifically designed to finding ways for helping students so that they are successful in school. The conference has been praised by many educators and this year it was fully booked in advance and we just managed to get only three places" said Chell.

Board secretary-treasurer Bruce Kwochka informed the board that plans for the reroofing project were ongoing. He said that the contractor was requesting for another $20,000 to remove and install a natural light dome. However the board declined to approve the expenditure, saying the amount seemed expensive. They requested that the secretary seek less expensive options for natural lighting or electric lighting.

WCS principal Ken Larson informed the board that the school was making a number of changes in the academic curriculum. Creative writing will be added to the English area. Drama 20 will now be offered in the applied arts classes. In social sciences, native studies 20 will be replaced with natives studies 30. This will be a Grade 12 option for the compulsory social science credit.

Larson informed the board that students had shown a tremendous improvement in Math classes. In Grade 10, 140 students passed their first semester math class while only three failed. He attributed this to an extended Grade 10 and 20 math course offered over three semesters. The success of the program has encouraged the school to expand the offering.

The board was also informed that the school is working on introducing a three-way conferencing between the students, staff and parents. This is aimed at bring the parents, students and teachers together so that they can review the student's performance and suggest how it can be improved.

"So we will be gearing to prepare staff and students for this event. Staff will receive inservice training on March 26 and students will be prepared in the upcoming month" said the principal.

On building maintenance, Larson informed the board that they recently discovered a room complete with a shower, in the North end basement that no one knew about. "Luckily there were no skeletons in there," he said. The room was discovered in the process of sanitizing the basement.

The WCS is planning to move their art room to the main floor of the old division board office. They will give up their present room to the College to expand their square footage. The school intends to keep the sanitized North end basement.

Other board members present were chairman Bruno Tuchscherer, vice-chair Bruce Wagner, Jerome Sidloski, Sonny Reinfelds, Darla Kwochka, Elaine Morrisette, Johanna Tiefenbach, Cindy Horner and Bryan Wilson.