With a job description in hand, School District #57 hopes to have a new district principal of Aboriginal education in place within the next few months.
School board chair Lyn Hall confirmed this week that a hiring process was launched in February with the help of an employment agency specializing in educational hiring run jointly by the provincial government and the school districts.
"It's a unique position and when you go into this process, you're not sure how large a field of candidates you may have so the broader the search, the better," Hall said.
The plan is to have the position filled by as soon as May to give the newcomer time to settle in.
Prior to starting the search, groups involved in aboriginal education provided their thoughts on the type of person they're looking for.
"We talked about knowing Aboriginal kids and multifaceted barriers and unique strengths that they have in terms of trying to increase their success rates in the system," said Aboriginal education board chair Marlene Erickson.
"And we talked about the diversity of all the Aboriginal groups here in Prince George and also the protocols for working with the First Nations here... the ability to work collaboratively with all these partner groups and really try and get as much support throughout the system for Aboriginal education."
There are about 3,000 Aboriginal students in School District #57, accounting for roughly 25 per cent of the total enrollment and Prince George is home to the only Aboriginal choice school in the province.
The job will be both challenging and rewarding, Erickson said, but the new hire will also enjoy the fruits of the previous principal's efforts, namely an Aboriginal education department.
"Now, it'll just be a matter of coming in and strengthening the current structure and making sure that it's fine tuned," Erickson said.
While the school district's total population is declining - the count is expected to level out at about 12,500 in 2014-15 compared to 13,500 this year - the Aboriginal population is growing Erickson noted.
"They're looking at a really challenging future and we know that education is key," Erickson said.
At 52 per cent, the high school completion rate for Aboriginals has lagged behind that for the total population at 72.4 per cent but has been improving. Between 2005-06 and 2009-10, the rate rose 13.8 percentage points and was 1.6 percentage points higher than the provincial average for Aboriginals.
The previous Aboriginal principal, Charlotte Henay, parted ways with the school district in January.
She was hired as the district's first Aboriginal principal of education midway through 2008 and was quickly appointed chair of the choice school development team.
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