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Students and staff at Art Smith Aviation Academy at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Cold Lake will soon benefit from additional classroom support after Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) was selected to receive provincial funding for three new Classroom Complexity Teams.
The teams will support classrooms with increasingly complex learning needs and will be introduced at three schools across the division: Art Smith Aviation Academy, Duclos School in Bonnyville, and École Plamondon School in Plamondon.
Each team will receive $300,000 in funding and will include one teacher and two educational assistants. Any remaining funds may also be used to access specialized services such as assessments, speech-language pathology and occupational therapy. The teams are expected to remain in place through the 2026–2027 school year.
NLPS Board Chair Karen Packard said the funding will help the division address the growing complexity of student needs in classrooms across the region.
“As a small, rural school division, we face unique challenges in addressing the growing complexity in our classrooms and supporting our students,” Packard said. “We are grateful that the government is taking action on the data that was provided to them and look forward to welcoming the Classroom Complexity Teams into our schools.”
Schools qualified for the teams based on provincial measures of classroom complexity in Kindergarten to Grade 6. Classrooms were assessed based on three main factors: class composition, the number of students with coded learning needs or English as an Additional Language, and overall class size. Classrooms rated high in at least two of those categories were eligible for the additional supports.
While the new thresholds identify high complexity when class sizes reach 30 students in Kindergarten to Grade 3 or 33 students in Grades 4 to 6, NLPS has historically aimed for much smaller classes. The division targets averages of about 17 students in Kindergarten to Grade 3 and 23 students in Grades 4 to 6, following recommendations from the Alberta Commission on Learning.
According to Superintendent Rick Cusson, maintaining those smaller classes requires significant investment but remains an important strategy for supporting both students and teachers.
The Classroom Complexity Teams will complement other initiatives already in place across the division, including full-day Kindergarten programming, mental health and well-being services in schools, and additional staffing supports for smaller rural schools.
Although the teams will be based at three schools, NLPS says the insights and strategies developed through the program will help inform how complexity is addressed across the entire division in the years ahead.