The St. Clair Catholic District School Board has always made it a priority to consult with their wider community when developing strategic plans. So, when Director of Education Deb Crawford learned about an online tool that could make community engagement more accessible, inclusive, and far reaching, she was interested immediately.

“We were looking for ways to expand our strategic planning process,” says Mrs. Crawford. “We wanted to hear from a wide variety of voices, so that the people in our community would see themselves in our strategic plan.”

That’s where the online tool Thoughtexchange comes in. It’s a platform that allowed community members to give their thoughts on how they believed Catholic schools could better prepare students for the future. They were also able to see what others had posted and give those thoughts a rating. This simple process of providing your own thoughts and rating the thoughts of others has resulted in some incredibly valuable insight into their community’s priorities, says Mrs. Crawford.

Read more: St. Clair uses technology to give whole community a voice in creating strategic plan

Recently released statistics from the Ontario Ministry of Education show that Catholic schools in the province continue to succeed in creating well-rounded high school graduates.

Both French and English Catholic school boards perform well above average. The Ministry sets its target 5-year graduation rate at 85%, and 27 out of the 35 Catholic school boards with numbers available are at or above that benchmark. In addition, two Catholic school boards are less than 1% away from the province’s goal.

“As someone involved in Catholic education, I’m very proud of what our schools do in Ontario and across the country,” says CCSTA Executive Director Julian Hanlon.

Of course, Catholic education is about more than just math and science. It’s about the whole person – body, mind, and spirit. This is best exemplified in the Ontario Catholic School Graduate Expectations (OCSGEs) introduced by the Institute for Catholic Education (ICE) in 1998, and still used today across the province. These expectations help form graduates rich in integrity, faith, and love.

Read more: Ontario Catholic schools continue to flourish

The recently formed Grateful Advocates for Catholic Education (GrACE) is an Alberta-based organization that seeks to celebrate Catholic education in the province.

The Chair of GrACE, Michael Ouellette, says that the founding of a group like this has been talked about for a while, but it’s now finally being acted upon.

“It’s something we’ve always wanted to do,” he says. “Our mission is to tell the story of Catholic education in the province of Alberta.”

With a new campaign being run seeking a unified school board, now seemed like a perfect time to organize and promote the value of Catholic education in the province.

Read more: GrACE forms to promote Catholic education in Alberta