The Cortes Island Academy appears to have its full quota of 20 students for 2023/24.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie, the Academy’s principle Board member, explained, “We’ve let the first 20 students know that they have a spot if they want it, and then we’ll start taking students off our wait list. This time last year, we were still like, ‘Oh no, we don’t know if anybody will sign up for this crazy new program we have.’ This year, not only is it an established program that’s going to keep continuing into the future, but we had so many applicants that we had to have a wait list.” 

“We took that hard job of figuring out who to let in and  gave it to a jury of community members, who listened to the students videos that they had to create as part of their application, read the reference letters, looked at their application, and helped take into consideration our matrix of priorities such as making sure we make additional concessions for local students, etc. Some of them said it was one of the hardest things they’ve ever had to adjudicate or give their thoughts on. It wasn’t easy, but it was a beautiful process of young and old Cortesians, people who lived on the island and have moved off, representatives from the school district and from the Outer Islands.

“The second really exciting thing that we’re doing this year, is that the Cortes Island Academy has officially created partnerships with other rural remote Outer Island communities within School District 72 to treat their students as much as possible as locals. That means that we can prioritize their applicants and applications into the Cortes Island Academy.”

“We’ve had to figure out  a rental situation where those Outer Islands families can come and share in the responsibilities of hosting these kids on our island.  They can be part of this innovative, awesome, educational experience, so that they can have a real option.”

 CC: Which Outer Islands? 

“We have offered places to students from of course Quadra, Sonora, Read,  and an island called (Bimbi?), which I’ve never even heard of.

“Those are what we’re calling the Outer Islands. There’s other ones too , Maurelle and other places out there. Some of these have families and students who get to school by boat or have almost no option at all even compared to Cortes. They’re even more remote.”

“We just want to stress that our rural and remote students are suffering in Canada, that they’re underperforming in all academic majors. They’re dropping out of high school at almost double the rates of their rural counterparts and they’re entering the workforce with the largest education gap of any developed country.”

“My dream is that every student in Canada has an option to something like a Cortes Island Academy, but in the meantime we’re starting in our own backyards and helping make this  a true option  for local people. So thank you again to our community and those many neighbors who took the time to be part of  this heart-wrenching process of figuring out who we are going to prioritize for letting in.”

“The Cortes Island Academy has done something that’s pretty hard to do, which is figure it out a way to leverage government and education money for something that is really out of the box.”

“This program still costs about $200,000 a year in hard costs, and that has been up to the Cortes Island Academy Society and the Cortes Island Community Foundation to fill that gap. We were able to fill that gap last year through individual donors and through a grant from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.”

“We are still trying to fill that gap this year. Of this year’s $200,000 hard costs, we have raised more than a quarter already.”  

“In particular, this year we’re really pushing our scholarship fund, which is new this year. Our goal for our scholarship fund is $70,000, that means that we don’t have to say no to any student, no matter what their financial background or resources are. We are really calling on our community. Who do you know who wants to help fund this program?” 

“There are other funds that we would like to raise so that we can keep paying our local facilitators, etc.”

“Every little amount helps, and it’s not just dollars that help. As we learned from  our admissions committee this year, there’s so many ways for people to be involved in this program. Thank you  for all that people have already done to make this happen.” 

“We are changing lives and anyone who wants to know just how radical we are changing lives, please take a moment and go to our website, Cortes Island Academy.ca and watch some of the student testimonials and projects, videos, podcasts, et cetera from last year, because I almost assure you, you’ll be brought to tears.  We believe a lot in what we’re doing  and the students need this opportunity.  We think there’s someone out there who wants to partner with us to realize this happening in a more sustainable way.” 

All images courtesy Cortes Island Academy

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