Student Achievement

Secondary School Apprenticeship: Over the past four years the district has benefitted from a grant ($20,000 in 2011/12) from ITA to enhance participation in the Secondary Student Apprenticeship (SSA) program. This year the district has 18 active SSA’s with 6 new since September and two more being signed up this week! The Industry Training Authority (ITA) will be providing $5,060,000 in its core budget for Youth Initiatives for 2012/2013. This is a significant increase over the 2011/12 investment and for the first time includes $800K to fund SSA supports within the School Districts. ITA had hoped to be able to support the SSA supports to a greater degree but we were unable to redirect the funding necessary to do so. As a result, funding for Work-Based Training will continue to be offered this fiscal year for the September 2012 and February 2013 ACE IT intakes. The original intention was to fund all the SSA project proposals that met the selection criteria. Now that this is no longer possible this fiscal year, the call for proposals will have to be done again to ensure a fair process. We will be receiving a re-formatted SSA Project Call for Proposals soon that is reflective of a competitive application process. The school district will be making an application.

Literacy Meetings: Assistant Superintendent Insley organized an elementary and a secondary meeting of teachers and administrators to talk about district direction and focus in literacy for next year. It was valuable to hear what is working and what supports are needed. These discussions will inform our district achievement contract and our literacy initiatives for 2012-2013.

Staff Changes at the Ministry of Education: Alison Sidow, Superintendent of Achievement, has accepted the position of Assistant Superintendent in School District 73 (Kamloops). A new addition to the Ministry staff is Maureen Dockendorf who is the Province’s new Superintendent of Reading. She is supporting the personalized learning transformation specifically focused on developing a provincial reading strategy. She is starting with the BC Action Plan: Changing Results for Young Readers with the goal of increasing the number of students who are successful, engaged readers. We look forward to working with Maureen and having her visit our district.

Innovation / Initiatives

DISTRICT-BASED INITIATIVES

Read/Rhyme and Rec: At this time, we are planning to offer our very effective summer intersession/intervention reading program to kindergarten/primary students at all schools. In addition this year, we will introduce a pilot grades 5 to 7 program at Similkameen Elementary Secondary School.

2012 Dry Grad Campaign: The BC Liquor Stores 2012 Dry Grad Campaign was a huge success across the province raising a total of $540,692. A total of $3,116 was raised for Okanagan Similkameen communities.

Defibrillator Enhancement Program: The secondary schools in School District No. 53 will once again be participating in this program. Thanks to the donation last year of $7,980 from community partner, Interior Savings Credit Union, the schools received 70 CPR mannequins, teacher and student resources,
and eight teachers were trained to teach CPR to their grade 10 students in P.E. This coming year, grade 10 P.E. teachers will be refreshed in their CPR training skills and learn how to teach their students how to use a defibrillator. Schools will receive defibrillator training mannequins, defibrillator training units and a defibrillator. For more information, visit the ACT Foundation website at www.actfoundation.ca.

Aboriginal Staffing and Budgets: At its April 17 meeting, the Aboriginal Education Advisory Council approved the preliminary Aboriginal program budget. This budget will be within the targeted funding and schools have received their preliminary allocations. These may again be adjusted in September when final student numbers are known.

Summer Professional Development: The district will be sponsoring a Six Traits Writing workshop/institute, with Donna Kozak (primary) and Brenda Bell (intermediate), on Wednesday, August 29 and Thursday, August 30 at Cawston Primary School. The District Professional Development Committee will be supporting district teachers to attend. Teachers attending this workshop will receive follow up in-service during the school year. We hope to have many district and out-of-district teachers attending.

Professional Development for ECE’s: Celebrate Early Learning in the Summer Sun Institute is on August 27 and 28 in Kelowna.

Welcome to Kindergarten: Schools are busy holding their Welcome to Kindergarten events during May and June. WTK is a program sponsored by the Early Learning Partnership and is an enhanced orientation program for students, and their parents, entering kindergarten in September 2012. The district uses Ready, Set, Learn funding to purchase a “book bag” full of books and other materials parents can use at home to help their child develop kindergarten skills. At the event, the school team welcomes parents and children to the school to learn all about the kindergarten program and the school, and meet the teacher and other important personnel at the school. WTK events are on the following dates:

Cawston Primary School Wednesday, May 23 10:00 – 11:30 am

Okanagan Falls Elementary Tuesday, May 29 8:40 – 11:15 am

Osoyoos Elementary Thursday, May 31 5:00 – 7:00 pm

Tuc-el- Nuit Elementary Tuesday, June 5 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Oliver Elementary (3 sessions) Wednesday, June 6 9:00 am – 2:30 pm

Elementary Track Meet: the annual elementary track meet will take place on Friday, June 1st at Similkameen Elementary Secondary School (SESS). Thank you to everyone who is organizing details and working with students to make this a fun and successful event.

EDI Reporting Out: On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, Ms. Joanne Schroeder will be reporting out on the Early Development Instrument results. The EDI survey is completed by kindergarten teachers in February. It gathers information about the readiness of children as they enter formal schooling and the information is used by agencies to make decisions regarding supports and programs for the age zero to six group. StrongStart facilitators, kindergarten teachers, early childhood providers, and other interested community members will be invited to participate. Joanne Schroeder is the Deputy Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership, an interdisciplinary research institute focused on helping children and families thrive. Joanne has played a foundational role as Community

Development Manager in the translation of HELP’s early child development research to communities. Previously she was the Provincial Advisor to Children First, a community capacity building initiative in 45 communities in B.C. and the National Lead Fellow for the Council for Early Child Development.

Roots of Empathy: is celebrating six years of success. On Wednesday, May 30 at 4:00 p.m. at the Southern Okanagan Secondary School atrium, we will celebrate with this year’s instructors and babies. We would like to especially extend an invitation to all of our alumni babies who have been involved with ROE in our district.

SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES

Year-End: It is that time of year when schools become even busier places due to year-end activities, planning for the following year, and staffing processes. I would like to take this opportunity to thank teachers, support staff, and administrators for their efforts and hard work at this busy time.

The following field trip has been approved: Mr. Peter Gajda will be taking a group of 37 students from OSS to the CSI @ LSI (UBC Life Sciences Institute). Annually, the LSI-GSI (Life Sciences Institute – Graduate Student Association) invites high school science teachers to apply to bring their class to the LSI for a day of suspect eliminating. Focused on providing the maximum hands-on experience, CSI@LSI introduces students to the field of research and the diverse career options for a trained researcher. Students will be guided through various experiments by LSI graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. This trip is in good order and is fully paid for by the LSI-GSI.

Operations

SOSS Tenders: Greyback Construction Ltd. has been awarded the foundation contract and has already begun. Warnaar Steel-Tech Ltd. from Kelowna was awarded the steel contract. The rest of the work for the rebuild will be going out to tender at the end of this month.

April 2012 Enrolment Report: As indicated in the attached report, student enrolment is 2,444.625 FTE which is an overall increase from September 2011 of 51.125 FTE. Elementary schools have decreased by 10 FTE, secondary schools decreased by 55.875 FTE and YouLearn has increased by 120.375 FTE since September 2011.

Auditorium Meeting: On May 9, a meeting with representatives of Adopt-a-Seat, South Okanagan Concert Society, Venables Auditorium Committee, South Okanagan Amateur Players, the Town of Oliver, SOSS and the school district was held to review the plans for the re-building of the auditorium (RDOS and Oliver Parks & Recreation unable to attend). Robert Hamilton, Theatre Consultant, was also in attendance to discuss options for the theatre and equipment requirements. It was confirmed that the theatre will seat 400 people and have a separate drama room for school use. A meeting will be scheduled for the fall prior to the distribution of the equipment tender. It is anticipated that the theatre will be complete in December 2013.

2012/13 Annual Budget Development: The Finance and Facilities Committee reviewed the draft 2012/13 annual budget at the meeting on May 9. The Budget Advisory Committee also meets again on June 6 and the final budget document will be reviewed at that meeting. The 2012/13 Annual Budget Bylaw is $27,755,316 and shows a reduction of operating revenue of $345,233 from 2011/12 due to the anticipated 1.5% reduction in funding protection.

The next regular meeting of the Board of Education will take place on June 20, 2012 at 7:00 pm at the School Board Office.