The South East Cornerstone School Division board of education closed a busy school season by reviewing two surveys that charted their progress over the past school year at their regular board meeting on Thursday.

The first was an external monitoring report regarding division System Goal Three, which states: "Our Staff is productive and successful!"

It was an all-inclusive school survey completed by school in the Cornerstone school division. It was then reported to the board by Brian Keegan and Patrick Renihan from the Saskatchewan Educational Leadership Unit from the Department of Educational Administration in the University of Saskatchewan.

"I am encouraged by the fact that the monitoring report stated that our staff is productive and successful," said chair of the board Audrey Trombley.

The report was based on a four-point scale in the surveys, with a range of answers from strongly agree to strongly disagree. It concentrated on 10 guiding principles, including development of the child, celebration of success, working together, participation, responsibility, school leadership, growth and innovation, all students will learn, success for all and commitment to be the best.

While the overall report showed that there was a compliance to the System Goal, there were some issues that Cornerstone needs to improve. "We give tests to learn, not to label anything or blame anything," commented Bryan Wilson, trustee of the board. "Now we will know where to focus on in a real sense."

A few of these areas of focus included that Cornerstone is doing a good job educating and reaching the students in the elementary levels, but they start to lose some contact as students reach junior high and high school.

"At an early age, students do not have a lot to say because they are content with their school education. However, as they reach high school they gain more of an identity and a voice, and they start to feel that their voice is unheard by their teachers or the school division," said Trombley.

There was also an issue of the relationship between the central office and teachers or support staff, as there were signs that teachers and support staff felt a loss of contact with the division office after amalgamation.

"It will take some time to accept the changes," said Trombley. "While teachers might not have contact with the Director of Education as often as they did under the smaller school division, we do have Superintendents of Education that can fulfill that role of maintaining contact."

Finally there was some concern from parents and students on the issue of bullying, while both teachers and administrators felt that bullying problems were adequately taken care at the school level.

"All of our schools have an anti-bullying program," said Trombley. "There even may be schools where bullying is not an issue at all. Unfortunately, this report did not show us where the bullying problem was an issue."

With this monitoring report complete on the System Goal #3, the school board will continue to review the System Goal on a yearly basis.

The second presentation was the Benchmark Program, which is an program implemented division wide. Warren Betker presented information on assessments in mathematics and reading by Grade 4 and Grade 8 students to the board. This was the second year that the Benchmark Program has been implemented division-wide for the Cornerstone School Division.

The program showed that in regards to writing assessments, students in the Cornerstone School Division are doing significantly better, as according to Betker. "These assessments were the same as the one we performed last year, so it was a consistent basis to compare off of. Then the information provided us with the benefit of providing data information for the schools to improve on."

The math assessments were not as comparable to last year, as the problem presented was different in 2006 than it was in 2007. However, "the primary element in the math assessments is the inservice opportunity for teachers in grading the studies as an opportunity for growth. It is really the teachers who are making the difference," said Betker.

The Benchmark Program already has a program plan to continue into the next school year, with six assessments planned in the second semester. There will be three writing and three mathematics assessments.

Betker commented that it will be the first time for the program that there will be a comparable assessment to how students have improved since they first took the assessments, as there will be students who took the assessments in Grade 4 who will do so for a second time in Grade 8.

"We will be able to see how the students have improved over time," said Betker.

The next meeting of the Cornerstone School Division board will be a special meeting held Friday, June 29, to complete the budget for the 2007-2008 school year. The board will then break for the summer, meeting again in August.