Dear Parents/Guardians:

As a school system, the success of our students is a direct reflection of the work being done by our staff as well as the important partnership between school, home and community.  On behalf of the school district, thank you for being a part of our commitment to providing inclusive, respectful, innovative, and engaging places of learning. As we close out another calendar year, I want to share a few points from our annual progress report:

2025 Enhancing Student Learning Report

This annual report outlines our progress in the Saanich Schools 2022-2027 Strategic Plan. As we pass the halfway point of this 5-year plan, we continue to see solid growth in areas such as student literacy, grade transitions and graduation rates, as well as overall student feelings of school connectedness.

Here are some key highlights:

• The strong alignment between School Plans and the district’s Strategic Plan helps facilitate targeted resource deployment.
• A continuing focus on literacy, graduation rates, and career and life competencies is showing positive results.
• Indigenous learner success is an important theme of our district plan. We are seeing increasing feelings of school connectedness which provides the necessary foundation for individual student gains, graduation success and a future with opportunities. As a group, Indigenous students are not achieving to the same level as their non-Indigenous peers, so this work continues to be a priority for all of us.
• Student well-being is a cornerstone building block of what we do, with several mental wellness and equity-based initiatives that support safe, inclusive learning environments throughout the district.
• Our work with Student Voice is providing key feedback on our Strategic Plan.

While we still have more work to do on our journey towards even better student success, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts from our dedicated staff which are resulting in improvements in some key areas.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season that brings both peace and joy to you and your families.

Dave Eberwein, Superintendent of Schools