Tucked away in the small hamlet of Conrich, is the Khalsa School – a Sikh faith based school which provides an environment to its students that is rich in Sikh culture, beliefs and values. The school first opened its doors in September 2007 when it only had a student population of fifty six students ranging in grades K-4. Since then, the school has now grown to a population of 375 students which now attend grades K-9.
On October 1, 2014, FortisAlberta Stakeholder Relations Manager, Allison Beaudry presented Khalsa School with a $2500 cheque and a banner as part of FortisAlberta’s Safety Star Grant program. This grant recognizes the school’s commitment to providing a safe and caring learning environment for their students, teacher and staff, and may be used to enhance an existing safety program or to fund a new safety initiative.
FortisAlberta launched the Safety Star school grant program in 2011 and invited schools to apply for the $2500 grant by demonstrating how their facilities, programming and philosophies are committed to the safety and overall well-being of the school community. A panel of judges evaluated the applications and awarded 10 Safety Star grants to schools throughout FortisAlberta’s service territory.
As part of the application process, Khalsa School needed to report on what safety practices they had implemented and participated in. In their application, they provided an impressive list of safety exercises and procedures that they had accomplished. The school implemented the AMA school safety patrol where 22 students in grades 4-6 became trained AMA safety patrol crossing guards. They recognized school safety traffic awareness week with a positive pointer campaign. This included a special portion of their assembly talking about “Point, Pause, Proceed” as well as introducing the campaign which involved educating parents and students about celebrating those who made safe choices in the parking lot.
They also kicked off a monthly student recognition for bus students of the month. Two students were selected every month for showing safe, caring and respectful choices on the bus. Fundraising, continued practices of being positive and proactive in their communication with parents and running drills of their emergency procedure practice all played a part in the school being awarded this grant.
FortisAlberta says that they are proud to provide the Khalsa School with our Safety Star grant. We wish to acknowledge all of the hard work that the teachers, students and parents have done and are pleased that they could be a part of assisting them with funding for their great initiative.
