Ła Bała Sgan Charles Hays Secondary School would like to acknowledge the traditional and unceded territory of the Ts’msyen the Sm’algyax speaking peoples who have been stewards of this land since time immemorial.  The land we learn and work together on is rich with the language, culture, and history of the Ts’msyen people.  CHSS acknowledges the responsibility to teach and learn about Ts’msyen culture and relationships to the land and is committed to pursuing ongoing and respectful education.

Charles Hays Secondary School (CHSS) is a grade 9-12 dual-track high school with a French Immersion Program and both Sm’algyax and French as second language courses.  The school has a strong academic program, a trades program, a highly competitive sports program, and a vibrant fine arts program.  The school has a diverse multicultural population including 55% students of Indigenous ancestry.  Our enrollment is up slightly and we are forecasted for 690 in September 2024.  

For the upcoming 2024/25 school year we will be continuing with the double block Semester System.  The semester system is four classes per day from September to January, then a new four classes from January to June.  The double blocks on Tuesdays and Thursdays allow students and teachers to engage in deeper learning, discussion, outdoor learning, and hands-on learning.  We have heard positive feedback from students, community support, and staff that not having bells has reduced anxiety for some students.  This has positively impacted students with auditory sensitivity so for next year we will start with no bells and assess throughout the year.

Our staff consists of Teachers, Education Assistants, Secretaries, Counsellors, Fluent Language Speakers/Elders, Indigenous Family Resource Workers, an Equity Mentor, a Food Sovereignty Mentor, and an Indigenous Coach Mentor.  We are thankful for our community partnerships that provide grant money for the Equity Mentor, Food Sovereignty Mentor, and our sports programs.

CHSS is steps away from nature.  In our backyard are outdoor learning opportunities that include learning about the local flora and fauna, the history of the territory taught by Indigenous Elders, and experiencing the beauty of Prince Rupert. 

We have students with diverse needs and are thankful for the Community Link and Breakfast Club of Canada funding for our Breakfast Club and Lunch Program.  We are also thankful for the support of the Lions Club, the PRACCS/Reaching Home Grant, and the Feeding Futures program for helping with our healthy and cultural meal programs.

The majority of CHSS students live in Prince Rupert, we also have students arrive from Metlakatla by ferry and bus and from the village of Port Edward by bus every day.

The School District 52 (Prince Rupert) and Maxłaxaała First Nation signed a Local Education Agreement (LEA) as educational partners. This agreement outlines shared goals and priorities in education for Metlakatla students serviced by School District 52.

We have a great deal to celebrate at CHSS including:

• Culturally and socially aware staff and students,
• Sm'algyax language and artwork are incorporated into the school and classrooms.
• Strong community partnerships,
• Thriving Sports programs (Basketball, Volleyball, Track, Soccer, Wrestling),
• Exceptional Arts programs (Band, Drama, Musical, Visual Arts)
• Asda Wagayt La’ooy (Since Time Immemorial) pole in our beautiful Library Learning Commons,
• A dynamic greenhouse that produces Farm to Table produce for our Foods Program, 
• A delicious Foods Program,
• Sm'algyax and French classes from grades 9-12,
• Transitions Feast to welcome the new grade 8 students to CHSS,
• Excellent shop facilities,
• Basketball Academy,
• Clubs- Art, Chess, E-Sports, Writers Club, Gay Club, Debate Team, Interact Club, Plant Parenthood, Outdoor Club, and Book Club,
• Student Council,
• Student Voice Advisory Group,
• Rotary Interact Club,
• French Immersion,
• PRIDE,
• Youth Explore Trades Sampler and Youth Work in Trades,
• Specialized Science Course
• Math Contest Participation,
• Place-Based Learning,
• Family Bingo Nights,
• Relationships and connection. 

Strengths:

• Community oriented,
• Inclusive,
• Respectful,
• Culturally aware,
• Have a strong sense of belonging,
• Socially & emotionally aware,

Stretches:

• COVID-19 Learning Loss,
• Social Emotional Resilience,
• Communication,
• Environmental awareness,
• Striving to improve Literacy and Numeracy,
• Attendance and preparedness,
• Apathy.

Strengths:

• CHSS students are involved in service clubs such as Student Council and Interact.  They embrace local cultural events (Orange Shirt Day, Moose Hide Day, Red Dress Day, National Indigenous People’s Day, and Black History Month), donate to charities, do a lot of fundraising, and volunteer for the community.
• Diversity in the school is evidenced by a vibrant and well-attended PRIDE celebration, the inclusion of pronouns in classroom activities and e-mails, Wellness Wednesday participation, and inclusivity in classrooms.
• Participation of students in the Student Voice Advisory Group on Anti-Racism, as well as visuals around the school.
• The majority of classes participated in Truth and Reconciliation through in-class learning, creating visuals for the hallway, and participating in the events throughout the year.
• Respectful and culturally aware is evidenced by the Luulgit Learning Feast (welcoming grade 8s to CHSS), Indigenous Day Celebrations, Honouring Indigenous Veterans, and learning on the land and from Elders in collaboration with the Indigenous Education Department.
• Belonging is evidenced by our FESL data and student demeanour in our school.
• CHSS connects with The Ministry of Child and Family Development Child and Youth Mental Health (CYMH), Primary Care Nurses, and Victim Services to collaborate on supporting students in need.
• Connections with Learning Services to co-support students with diverse abilities and disabilities as well as outside organizations such as POPARD.
• School-based Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

Stretches: 

• We can improve our understanding of environmental stewardship at CHSS by heightening our recycling, using less, composting, littering, and talking more about the environmental impact of climate change. A school-wide climate-change commitment should be created.
• Social-emotional learning specifically anxiety and stress are concerns for our students and a focus of the next school year's goals. Wellness Wednesday has been very helpful, but the commitment needs to continue with social-emotional lessons in all classes.
• Our Literacy assessment data indicates that our student's proficiency level is comparable with the provincial average at grade 10.  However, students have said that they enjoy reading less and this is a priority for next year. We will continue to host novel studies and look at bringing in resources at every reading level.
• The Numeracy data indicates that we have more work to do in helping students understand how to apply their math skills to real-world problems. Math classes have been doing word problems with their students at the beginning of the day, and moving into a semester system, students had math for half a year instead of one third. 

Our overarching goals are Equity, Inclusivity, Mental Health Literacy and Truth and Reconciliation.  A primary goal of CHSS is to address systemic barriers impacting Indigenous student achievement.   We also strive to ensure that education at CHSS is inclusive and accessible to all students.

1) To use the First People's Principles of Learning to guide the education and operation of CHSS.

2) To improve literacy rates.

3) To enhance student application of numeracy.

4) To embed Social Emotional Learning into all interactions within the school community.

EQUITY

Anti Racism Commitment

Charles Hays Secondary School is committed to creating a welcoming and equitable learning environment that is responsive and inclusive. 

In January 2023, the B.C. government launched the provincial K-12 Anti-Racism Action Plan to support school districts in their commitment to anti-racism initiatives in their school communities. This plan is a multi-year framework to specifically address racism and discrimination in education and to create a culture and climate of belonging for all students, staff, and families. The Action Plan includes six priority areas of action: Community Voice, Removing Barriers, Raising Awareness, Collaborative Change, Capacity Building, and School Support.

The K-12 Anti-Racism Action Plan is designed to improve outcomes for Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour and support sector-wide understanding and growth of anti-oppressive systemic practices and content. The Action Plan provides support and builds equity-based initiatives to start to address historical and oppressive barriers and lead to student success and ultimately empower students and educators to respond to discrimination.

Our commitment at CHSS is to enact this plan through:

1.         Furthering our learning about systemic racism and what it means to be Anti-Racist

2.         Update our Code of Conduct to reflect the Action Plan

3.         Understanding our shared responsibility in dismantling racism through tough conversations and adopting new approaches.

Truth and Reconciliation

Staff Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation:

Our staff commitment to Truth and Reconciliation is built on Relationships, Capacity and łoomsk (respect the land, respect yourself and respect others).

·        Relationships involve: Social/Emotional Learning; Trauma Informed Practice; Identity; relationships to others and self (bias and privilege) 

·        Capacity involves professional learning with students and staff; sharing, collaboration; reflection and change; true history today; support; assessment; and pedagogy.

·        łoomsk involves: rights holders, cultural connections; recognizing Indigenous knowledge in a variety of ways; the importance of language (the language of the territory Sm'algyax and recognizing problematic colonial language)

Our Goals:

1.      Sharing and reviewing Indigenous student data including the Annual District Growth Plan Report and the How Are We Doing Aboriginal Report to make evidence-based decisions regarding school growth. School growth action items will include:

·       Incorporate Sm’algyax into day-to-day greetings, emails, classroom routines, and announcements.

·       Increase and maintain local Indigenous imagery and art on display throughout the school.  Including increased bulletin board space to replace the locker displays.

·       Celebrate Indigenous culture by recognizing relevant days throughout the school year.  Including the annual Red Dress Walk and honouring National Indigenous Peoples Day (including student presenters if possible) and National Indigenous History Month.

·       Increased opportunities for drumming, and to grow a drumming program connected to our school.

·       Increasing Indigenous student participation in school clubs, teams and student council.

·       Celebrating our students with slide shows on the school televisions.

2.      Consultation with Indigenous members connected to our school community to:

·       Update the Code of Conduct to include culturally appropriate restorative practice.

·       Increase participation of Indigenous Families in the CHSS Parent Advisory Committee.

Literacy

·        Our school-wide goal is to focus on Literacy in every class.  Each Department is working on a literacy goal that fits the curriculum and unique aspects of their discipline.  Collectively, we are working towards a love of reading, increased practice in writing for all subject areas, and the use of explicit literacy strategies to help students access, comprehend, and synthesize written work. 

Numeracy

·        As we reviewed our Numeracy Assessment data and listened to the students' stories, and teacher feedback, we realized that our numeracy goal will be closely tied to our literacy goals.  Some students struggle with the practical application of math.  The action we will take is to utilize more word problems and real-world math applications along with literacy strategies to help students decode the relevant information from the extraneous.  We hope that the semester system will help with the numeracy assessment as teachers can take time to prepare students for the assessment.

Mental Health Literacy

·        We reflected on our strengths and stretches around Social Emotional Learning at CHSS. We brainstormed key themes in the area of SEL that we wanted to prioritize at CHSS.  We used a rubric to identify areas we are doing well and areas we would like to devote more time to.  CHSS has continued to implement Wellness Wednesdays, collaborated on the student-led Wellness Room, and provided mental health lessons to classes.

WHAT WILL TEACHERS LEARN MORE ABOUT TO SUPPORT OUR GOALS?

The staff have brainstormed the following to support our goals:

1. Bringing in experts and working in departments during Pro-D days and ordering books for a book club type of collaborative learning.
2. Make suggestions to the joint Pro-D committee.
3. Collaboration around student needs.
4. Implement the literacy and SEL goals intended to address learning loss.
5. Support literacy development in classes, such as staff cultivating literacy strategies, building a culture of reading school-wide, physical literacy at a younger age to help the continuum through the grades, and French literacy education.
6. Professional development in Social Emotional Learning.

The staff have brainstormed the following to support our goals:

1. Bringing in experts and working in departments during Pro-D days and ordering books for a book club type of collaborative learning.
2. Make suggestions to the joint Pro-D committee.
3. Collaboration around student needs.
4. Implement the literacy and SEL goals intended to address learning loss.
5. Support literacy development in classes, such as staff cultivating literacy strategies, building a culture of reading school-wide, physical literacy at a younger age to help the continuum through the grades, and French literacy education.
6. Professional development in Social Emotional Learning.

Actions:

• Student voice and focus groups.
• Partner with Wap Sigagtgyet on authentic resources, protocol, connection to the community, and including Elders, Mentors, and Role Models.
• Meetings with parents to brainstorm ways to increase community and family involvement in school.
• Engaging the PAC for feedback and ideas to reach our goals.
• Indigenous Mentor to assist students in the transition from grade 12 to adulthood.
• Transitions courses in terms one and two to build relationships and support students to complete courses they missed or need for graduation or transition to the next grade level.
• Continued weekly meetings to track student progress and needs.
• Use data to make evidence-based decisions.

School goal review

The staff conducted a school goal review in June 2024 to assess the progress on our school goals as well as brainstorm new goals for the next cycle.  Below are some key takeaways from each section of our school plan.

·       We have made strides in our Truth and Reconciliation goals over the past three years.  Since developing these goals we have increased the number of Indigenous cultural dates of significance that we observe.  We have created a Truth and Reconciliation staff team, a Student Voice Advisory team, and a Young Matriarch’s group who work independently and collaboratively on the cultural events.  To extend and enhance our school goals, we will be working on ensuring that meaningful learning happens before, during, and after each event.  We continue to extend and make visible our learning as leaders in the school by learning Sm’algyax, including language in all of our correspondence, and bringing in professional development drumming.

·       The Anti-Racism commitment is a new addition to our Code of Conduct and school plan. It was developed in 2023 and modelled from the Ministry of Education and Childcare K-12 Anti-Racism action plan. We have been working as a staff and school on bias and privilege awareness as well as systemic racism and micro-aggressions.  Our next step is to build Anti-Racism into our school code of conduct and continue to work with the staff and students on our school expectations.

·       Within the equity goals, we have made strides towards a school-wide literacy focus and the math department has been working on word problems to mirror the applied numeracy found on the graduation assessments.  The Department Heads will be working next year on measurable goals connected to the School Plan and the District Strategic Plan that we will track for the next goal cycle.

·        Mental health literacy is an area where we need to focus more attention.  The staff and students have adopted Wellness Wednesday and we have a student-led Wellness Room.  From our Student Learning Survey results, mental health and well-being is an area where our students self-identify as struggling.  We have introduced a Mosaic Health course that all grade 9 students will take next year.  We will also be brainstorming new SEL goals for the next three years.

Data from 2023-24- Please Note the Provincial Data is for the District, not CHSS specific.

2) Literacy Assessment results

Our Literacy 10 data is slightly lower than the Provincial proficiency levels:

• 54.96% of CHSS students are proficient or extending in 2023-24
• 69.22% of students in the Province are proficient or extending in 2023-24. The main variation in these numbers is in the Extending category where CHSS students are 3.05% and the Province is at 11%

Our Literacy 12 data is lower than the Provincial proficiency levels:

• 49.6% of CHSS students are proficient or extending in 2023-24
• 77.46% of students in the Province are proficient or extending in 2023-24

3) Numeracy Assessment results

Our Numeracy 10 data is lower than the Provincial proficiency levels:

• 24.82% of CHSS students are proficient or extending in 2023-24
• 45.50% of students in the Province are proficient or extending in 2023-24

4) Honour Roll, and Student Achievement

Semester 1 – Grade 9 – 35 students

Semester 1 – Grade 10, 11, 12 – 108 Students

Semester 2 – Grade 9 – 42 Students

Semester 2 – Grade 10, 11, 12 – 95 Students

Our average grade this year was 72.3% in grades 10-12.  A decrease from 77.3% in 2022-23 on par with 72.2% in 2021-22.

5) Student achievement and transition rates

• We are noticing an improvement in our completion rates.  In 2022/23 our completion rate for Non-Indigenous students was 92%, for Indigenous students it was 73%
• Of the students who attended CHSS in 2023/24, 125/145 students graduated.
• 82% Indigenous
• 95% Non-Indigenous
• The number of students graduating with an Adult Dogwood Diploma is decreasing.

7) The Aboriginal Report How are We Doing?

• There is still an equity gap to be closed in the Indigenous and Non-Indigenous completion rates, however, it is narrowing.  We also need to focus on the disparity of letter grade achievement between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous students as Indigenous students have been achieving lower percentage grades in core classes.
• The number of students in Alternate Programs has decreased in the past 5 years.          

8) 2023 Adolescent Health Survey- Below are general takeaways from the Department Heads on this data:

·       23% of the respondents recorded having a mental health condition.

·       35% of the respondents stated they slept 4-6 hours the night before the survey and that they were texting, scrolling social media or watching videos instead of sleeping

·       45% of respondents had drunk alcohol (beyond a few sips), and of those who consume alcohol, 72% first tried it between the ages of 11 and 14.

·       28% of respondents use cannabis, and of those who use cannabis 59% first tried it between the ages of 11-14

·       22% of respondents had had sexual intercourse.  Efforts made to prevent pregnancy are as follows (please note respondents could mark all that apply)

o   9% did not try to prevent pregnancy

o   30% withdrawal method

o   44% condoms

o   26% birth control

o   19% IUD

·       27% of respondents had three or more close friends online whom they had never met in person

·       8-10% of respondents strongly disagreed that teachers or other school staff cared about them.  57-62% agreed or strongly agreed that the adults at school care about them.                                    

The staff has been active in the development and review of the school-wide goals this year.  We have been working on these goals since the 2020-21 school year.  2023-24 concludes our three year review cycle.  In 2024-25 we will be reviewing the progress of our goals, and setting new goals for the next three years. Our goals will continue to align with the District's Strategic Plan Goals of Equity, Truth and Reconciliation, and Mental Health Literacy.  

Staff Observations of the Data and Anecdotal Feedback

Literacy Assessment Results:

• Improving faster than numeracy.
• Understanding far exceeds communication skills.
• 20% discrepancy between our school and the provincial average.
• Grade 12’s lower, but not significantly.
• Grade 10’s similar to last year.
• Small data pool skews results.
• The bar graph shows most students are proficient.
• More emerging students than in 2021/2022.

Numeracy Assessment Results:

• Issues across the board, but improving.
• Little change.
• Many developing students; "developing" is broad.
• Low scores province-wide.
• Grade 10 has more developing than proficient students.
• Questions about validity.
• Concerns about students taking it seriously.
• Small sample size.

Transition Rates:

• COVID impacted rates, but improvement was noted in 2022/23.
• Promising overall.
• Struggles for students with diverse abilities.
• Concerning Indigenous student transition rates.
• Disproportionate impact on diverse needs and Indigenous students post-COVID.

Comparison to Last Year:

• Slightly lower, especially for students with diverse needs.
• Overall down slightly, except for grade 11 and 12 transitions.
• Positive momentum.
• Students overall are doing better.
• Support measures effective.

Student Learning Survey Results:

• Indigenous secondary students feel less welcome; low sense of belonging.
• Mental health is a concern.
• Mixed results; areas for improvement.
• Concerns about survey seriousness.
• Students feel safer.
• Disheartening Indigenous students' feelings of non-belonging.

Anecdotal Feedback from Staff:

• Wonders about the impact of the current schedule.
• Generally positive.
• Increased student anxiety.
• Lower attendance.
• Higher sports participation.
• Young students feel safe; some fear using bathrooms.
• Positive student connections for attendees; challenges with attendance and expectations.
• Cohort model success.
• High expectations mixed with empathy; need for transition opportunities.
• Warm greetings and open classroom doors reduce anxiety.
• Emphasis on growth mindset and resilience.

We intend to share this plan with students through focus groups at all grade levels. Additionally, we gather student feedback through the Leadership Class, Student Voice Advisory Group, and the Young Matriarch’s Group.

The goals for next year were shared with the Parent Advisory Committee in the October meeting.  T

We will be sharing the working school plan on our school website and inviting parents to review it and give feedback.  We will also be updating it throughout the year.