The 2017-18 school year saw Student Services in the Chinook School Division make numerous changes.

At Monday's school board meeting the Student Services Board Monitoring Report was given and highlighted an overall successful year.

Bob Vavra is the superintendent of learning for the ChinookSchool Division and said that the biggest change they experienced was with the reduction in personnel. 

He said despite the reduction they've been able to get more done.

"We've just changed our process," he said. "We are being more systematic with our service delivery and we've actually been able to maintain service levels in the past."

Currently, there are 134 students receiving specialized support in the school division.

"Students with IIPs (Inclusion and Intervention Plan) would be students that have more intense learning needs," Vavra said, "Our specialists - whether it's OTs, psychologists, SLPs - would support them with their learning needs."

The school division reduced one psychologist, one SLP, and one OT.

Vavra said that they've been able to be more successful with fewer staff thanks to a cluster model they introduced.

"We are creating a uniform system for each cluster, so each group of schools would receive the same supports as another group of schools."

Vavra said technology has also played a big role in seeing their success.

"It's really reducing windshield time," he said. "We can put very similar supports in place without the driving or mileage behind it. By using the technology we are actually gaining quite a bit of time even though we have reduced personnel."

Vavra said due to the cluster model and technology, they were able to achieve the goals they set out to achieve.

"Our main goal was to not reduce service for students and not having students fall through the cracks and I think we've been really good in not having that happen."

Vavra added that looking forward they hope to continue their successes for next year.

"We are going to continue to try and see what technologies and what systems we can put in place to be more efficient," he said.