Norgate Elementary is moving ahead with a plan to become an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, despite the curveball that COVID-19 has thrown at the school system.
In fact, should it be necessary to continue online learning, IB schools already have a leg up, said district principal Kathleen Barter.
“It’s a perfect fit,” said Barter, adding that in a typical IB unit, students do a lot of exploring topics on their own. “They do that independent learning,” she said.
When COVID-19 resulted in classroom closures this spring “our IB schools hit the ground running,” she said. That’s something that can also happen at Norgate, said Barter.
Norgate was recently accepted as a “candidate school” by the International Baccalaureate organization.
That sets the stage for a year when staff and students begin to explore the IB program under the direction of an IB consultant, who helps the school put concepts into action.
The following year would see the school apply to become an official International Baccalaureate school following an external review.
If approved, Norgate would be the third elementary school to adopt the program in the district.
The program, which emphasizes collaborative problem solving and global citizenship, is already in place at Capilano and Queen Mary elementary schools, where it has been popular with families.
Capilano Elementary is now so full that the school doesn’t accept students from outside its catchment area, while neighbouring Norgate operates at about 53 per cent capacity.
That’s in part what prompted the school district to change school catchment boundaries, removing an area west of Capilano Road and north of Marine Drive from the Capilano catchment and placing it into the Norgate catchment.
Educators hope an IB program at Norgate will be equally popular and draw students – some of whom currently bus out of Norgate to attend other schools - back to the neighbourhood school.
Barter said so far, parents in the community have been enthusiastic about the idea of Norgate becoming an IB school.
Because Carson Graham Secondary is also an IB school, students can now go from kindergarten right through to Grade 12 in that program, said Barter.
Switching Norgate to an IB school will come with costs. Because IB schools do not allow split grade classrooms, the school district will have to budget $100,000 for an addition class and classroom teacher. The school district will also have to pay for expenses including approximately $20,000 a year for International Baccalaureate teacher training, and between $50,000 and $30,000 a year for the IB coordinator. The total to put the program in place for the 2020-2021 school year will be about $200,000.
In future years, the school district would also have to pay for two additional teachers, including a second language teacher, to meet IB requirements. School district staff estimate that will cost an additional $200,000.
