Classes at the Dene High School have been cancelled this week after a stabbing incident last Thursday, left a student and a teaching assistant injured.
Jason Young, the Director of Education for the Northern Lights School Division, said that the school should resume operations on Monday.
“We’ve spent most of the week just engaging a number of stakeholder groups from staff, our support staff, teaching staff, students, and parents just to get some feedback as we kind of pull together this plan for school startup. Tentatively we’re looking at a school startup on Monday, and when I say tentatively, I still need to confirm with Donna, who is the principal there, as to what that school startup would look like,” said Young. “We’ve added a few additional cameras to the high school; we’ve also added two additional security guards; we’ve also looked at adding metal detectors. Two walkthrough metal detectors, six handheld metal detectors as well, as part of those safety measures; there are a few other things that we’re looking at as well, but those items will just take more time to have the installation of particular types of equipment.”
To address the shortage of staff, Young said that the school is working on implementing its retention plan. “We’re working on some plans; we’ve got a retention plan that we’ve been working on and adding to year over year with additional strategies that we’re looking at and advocacy efforts to ensure that we have the resources to fund those things, and so we’re looking at continuing to refine that plan and carrying out that plan as we have in previous years and into the next year, and we hope that will help with our recruitment efforts and retention efforts for next school year,” explained Young.
In an effort to gather feedback and hear concerns from parents, the school division will be taking part in a parent meeting this coming Wednesday.