Incoming Prairie South School Division director of education Tony Baldwin is excited to begin this new phase in his career as an educator in a time of historic change to the education sector in Saskatchewan.

Shortly after it was announced earlier this month that Baldwin would become the director of education for Prairie South effective this August, Saskatchewan Education Minister Don Morgan along with Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) president Janet Foord announced the implementation of the Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP). The ESSP is the first ever province-wide plan to be developed in co-operation with all education sector partners, approved by the 28 school boards in the province and accepted by the Government of Saskatchewan.

Baldwin said ESSP is a change from the Continuous Improvement and Accountability Framework that has been given from the ministry to school divisions for the past seven or eight years and names a series of things the ministry requires school divisions to be constantly improving. He said the ESSP is a new model that gets school divisions working together with the ministry to figure out what the areas are that each division has to address as they move forward to have a better education system in five years than there is now.

“School divisions are (now) in the process of developing something called a Level 2 plan, which will be sort of a school division specific response to the Education Sector Strategic Plan provincially,” said Baldwin. “It’s the first time since I’ve been an educator…that there’s ever been a single provincial improvement plan that is driven by school divisions rather than driven by the government.”

He said a good example of how education plans would be influenced by the specific context of the individual school divisions is graduation rates, which are one of the things that the education sector is trying to address provincially. Currently in Saskatchewan about 73 per cent of kids who start Grade 10 finish Grade 12 three years later, but in Prairie South that number is around 82 per cent.

Baldwin said the provincial goal is to have a province wide graduation rate of 85 per cent by 2020, so Prairie South may not need to focus on that as much as some other school divisions because they’re nearly at the goal already. That means the division could decide to invest some of the work at improving graduation rates into other areas.

The ESSP “is one of the things that is very interesting for me starting this job now (because) the school divisions are just working on their Level 2 plans that are aligned with the provincial strategic plan right now and those plans are going to extend to 2020, so really that’s the bulk of what’s left of my career,” said Baldwin. “It’s kind of neat to be able to start in a school division at the beginning of that planning process.”

Arm River-Watrous MLA Greg Brkich has won the nomination to become the Saskatchewan Party candidate for the Arm River constituency in the next provincial election.

Brkich defeated contestant Clark Puckett in a vote held among party members at a nomination meeting last Tuesday at Davidson Town Hall. He will be seeking his fifth term in office as a Saskatchewan Party MLA when the next provincial election is held likely sometime in spring 2016.

“The support was overwhelming,” said Brkich after the vote. “I was really impressed with the support I got from the people in the room.”

Around 300 people filed into the Hall to cast their ballot after hearing both men speak about their previous experiences and qualifications to be the next Party candidate and what issues they would advocate for if elected.

“That humbled me,” said Brkich. “I was very impressed because there was people from all over the constituency. Some had to drive as much as an hour-and-a-half to two hours to come here to take part in this nomination.”

The new Arm River constituency encompasses much of the same territory as Brkich’s current riding except Watrous will no longer be included and Craik would.

The new riding would stretch down to past Central Butte in the southwest and run north along Lake Diefenbaker. It will then go above Hanley and move east under Watrous before hitting Big Quill Lake and then move down and west towards Last Mountain Lake. Using the lake as a natural boundary, it will head south passing just above Strasbourg on its way to Regina Beach before cutting straight across above Moose Jaw on its way back to near Central Butte.

Brkich said the support he received in the campaign for the nomination was strong from the outset, but as in every election he ran as if he was one vote behind. He said the campaign team worked hard throughout the six-week race and were able to increase their membership in the party to over 500 members, which also bodes well for the next election.

“It increases the awareness,” he said. “Also, because this constituency does change quite a bit (with) the new one, I got to make a lot of new contacts that I wouldn’t have made till close to the election. In the long run it’s going to be a very good benefit for us for the next election with the contacts I’ve made in each and every town throughout the constituency in the new part (of the riding).”

To better help this area’s veterans and their families after the recent closure of the Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) district office in Saskatoon, Royal Canadian Legion Branch #51 president Gord McRae is entering training to become a volunteer branch service officer.

A branch service officer assists veterans by identifying those with unmet health needs and any possible benefits they could receive from VAC and then making appropriate referrals to provincial command service officers. This branch-specific function became especially important after the Department of Veterans Affairs oversaw the closing of eight district VAC offices across Canada Jan. 31, including the one in Saskatoon, which provided face-to-face services for veterans.

“A lot of veterans are entitled to certain health benefits and…that’s where the service officer would come in,” said McRae, noting he is attending a branch service officer training session at the beginning of May and would become active in the role right after that. “There are a lot of (veterans) who are still alive that are old enough that they’re entitled to a lot of benefits. When they pass on, the families are. That to me is very important. They do a lot of extra for the veterans if they know how to apply for it. That’s where I’d like to see this all happen. It’s coming up more and more.”

The transition of the person-to-person contact between a veteran and their families with a qualified individual ready to identify and respond to the challenges facing them for an online self-service program is McRae’s main concern. He said a lot of veterans have difficulty filling out the complex online applications for services correctly and denying them this access to in-person help creates lengthy delays for these people getting the services they need.

“At least with the Veterans Affairs (offices) someone there knows how to fill it out and it’s done instantly or in a (short) time frame,” he said. “That’s important to the veterans or even the people that are involved…like doctors who want to do something for them.”

To read more please see the April 21 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Construction of the Dundurn International Exhibition Centre will not begin this spring and no firm start date has yet to be presented.

Fred Wilson, Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Dundurn, said negotiations between the RM and Brightenview Development International Inc., which is building the massive wholesale outlet, are ongoing. He said they spoke to Brightenview April 8 and the company did not indicate when construction would begin.

“Everything is still progressing,” said Wilson. “It’s a multi-million dollar project and there is a lot of things that have to fall in place.”

Construction on the 155-acre site located a half-mile north of the Highway 211 and Highway 11 intersection on the east side of the highway was slated to begin in the fall of 2013 and last for 18 to 24 months. Once completed, the centre would potentially house 350 Chinese businesses that would sell wholesale products to buyers in North America and employ over 1,000 people.

“Everything is moving along,” said Wilson. “I’m not starting to get buck fever or anything. I think it is still going to happen, but it’s just taking a little longer maybe than what originally the plans were. Whether they’ll get started this summer, I can’t really (say). But I still feel quite confident that the project is still going to happen.”

In addition to the Exhibition Centre, Brightenview also pledged to help the community build a multi-million dollar community centre in Dundurn that would house a skating rink, swimming pool, hall and office space through a donation towards the costs of the project. Wilson said the new community centre is still in the plans.

“We’ve had some preliminary discussions on it, but we haven’t come up with all the financing on it yet,” he said. “It’s still part of the project.”

Wilson noted there are many people saying ‘I won’t believe it till I see it,’ but he is still confident the centre will become a reality. He said they are just not in a position to “put an exact date or timeline” on construction of it as of yet.

Sarah Nykiforuk, 17, has decided to make a difference in the lives of those suffering from mental illness and cancer.

Sarah is running an online donation campaign to raise $1,000 by June for the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). She is also pledging to cut her long golden hair shortly after she reaches that goal and donate it to a foundation that makes wigs for financially disadvantaged people suffering from cancer.

“I’ve set up a page on the Canadian Mental Health Association website (www.cmha.ca), so people can go on it and search for ‘Sponsor Sarah Nykiforuk,'” said Sarah, who is a Grade 12 student at Davidson School. “If people want to pay with cash or cheque they can give those to me and I could enter their cash or cheque onto the website and they would get a tax-deductible receipt for any donation they contribute.”

Sarah began her campaign to raise funds for the CMHA on April 2, which is Autism Awareness Day, because of her interest in the brain development disorder and the new options medical personnel are using to help people touched by it. However, she said the decision to go forward with the fund-raising campaign happened near the beginning of the school year when she became more serious about supporting the overall cause of better treatment of mental illness.

“I’ve met a lot of people who have struggled through different mental health issues such as bipolar disorder and depression and I’ve just seen the ways those issues have affected them and their families,” she said. “Those are people that I’ve seen who’ve been getting help. I know there are a lot of people out there who aren’t getting help and if I can have some part in helping them to have access to that I really want to.”

During her campaign, Sarah is also spending time researching different charitable organizations to find one she could donate her shorn hair to when she cuts it in mid-June.

To read more please see the April 14 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

The Davidson Swimming Pool community auction being held this Thursday at the Davidson Rink is shaping up to be one of the biggest fund-raising projects the new pool committee has held to date.

Jessie Foster, a member of the new Davidson Swimming Pool committee, said there will be a full bar, midnight lunch, appetizers, door prizes, a silent auction and the main live auction during the evening. She said the cost to get in to the adult-only event is a $10 charge at the door, which covers the midnight lunch and entry into the door prize contest, but the chance to bid on some of the hundreds of “amazing” donated items is worth the price of admission in itself.

“We’ve got quite a variety,” said Foster, noting more auction items are still coming in. “We’ve got everything from meals to the field and homemade baking to services like Bobcat (Landscaping) or trucking to spa packages, concert tickets, flight packages and Rider tickets. We really have a good variety of items for everybody.”

Foster said the committee has raised close to $500,000 so far solely through fund-raising events and community donations. She said to reach their goal of having $1.3 million by 2015 they are going to begin focusing on applying for grant money to try and find some funding from outside the community to get closer to the final total.

In the meantime, the committee is taking a closer look at the initial plans of the new pool design and would be getting some technical drawings made up. Foster said once everything is ready they’d like to invite the entire community to an open meeting to take a look at what is being proposed along with a breakdown of the costs.

She said after the auction the committee is planning on holding a spring bottle drive. There are a few other community events in the works as well, but for now they’re concentrating their efforts on putting together an enjoyable evening this Thursday at the Rink and hoping for a good turnout from members of the community.

“We are going to have fun surprises during the auction that I think people are going to enjoy,” said Foster. “It’s going to be a fun evening to come out and bid and socialize and have a good time.”