The Baragar Story
Baragar was founded in 1981 by Chuck Curteis in White Rock, Canada.
Chuck began his career in education as a 19 year old teacher in British Columbia. He soon became a high school administrator following completion of post graduate studies.
His career path took him to Ottawa, where he headed up the Elementary-Secondary Education Statistics Branch of Statistics Canada, Canada's national statistical agency.
While participating in the annual meeting of CASA (Canadian Association of School Administrators), at lunch, and on the back of a napkin, he outlined a process that would eventually become the basis for the first of the Baragar suite of software products, a new and unique way of creating enrolment projections. The process was developed and tested, at the school district level, in co-operation with the Manitoba Department of Education.
Chuck and his family then moved back to B.C. where he headed the planning department for the Surrey School District. At that time, Surrey was the fastest growing District in Canada. Chuck immediately replicated the process at the school level, and was able to convince the B.C. Government that the Surrey School District required and deserved over 50% of the entire provincial capital budget that year.
Shortly thereafter, the Burnaby School District contacted Chuck asking him to help them get funding. Chuck started speculating about improvements and design changes with his computer savvy son, Jason, and Baragar was born. With the blessing of the Surrey Superintendent Doug Jennings, Chuck embarked on setting up a company to help other School Districts and Boards across the country.
As it turned out, over the next decade in Surrey, 32 new schools and more than 40 additions were constructed, 5 schools were closed, magnet programs were introduced, and junior/middle schools were phased out and elementary and secondary schools offered new grade ranges. In dealing with all these planning problems, the ideas for the remaining software programs in the Baragar suite emerged.
In 1994, Chuck was also joined by his second son Carson to build a business that remains strong many years later.
In 2003 Baragar Systems entered the US market.
Today Baragar employs 16 fulltime and 9 part-time staff; serving more than 82 school districts enrolling in excess of 1.6 million pupils in both Canada and the United States.