School District No. 53 (Okanagan Similkameen)
BOARD REPORT
A brief summary of items discussed at Trustees’ Regular Meetings
At the April Education Committee meeting trustees looked at a new course that was locally developed by Ardith Parker and Lindsey McVicar. The course was developed out of a need to offer students in the alternate program meaningful hands-on alternatives to textbook work. The course, “Expression Through Art 10” offers students an opportunity to create and express themselves while earning 4 credits towards graduation. The assignments in this course are designed to promote relationship building between alternate staff members and students through guided journaling exercises related to each of the art assignments. The emphasis of this course is creative expression, self-awareness and reflection. This course was approved at the Regular Board Meeting this week; how fortunate for these students to be able to enroll in such a worthwhile course.
Tuc El Nuit Elementary (TEN) principal, Shendah Benoit, presented a proposal for late French Immersion to the Education Committee in April. The committee has given her approval to explore offering this opportunity to students in the community to see if there are sufficient numbers to support late immersion. If there is enough interest in the district for this program to proceed another request will come to the Board of Education for approval at the end of May. The last day to express interest in this program is Monday April 27th, 2015. There will also be an information meeting for parents at 5:00 pm at TEN on this day.
Due to the current financial pressures we are looking at possibly moving the Osoyoos YouLearn program into the Osoyoos Secondary School. Closing the facility will save the district approximately $30,000 in lease monies and utilities. It will also provide easy access to OSS students for wider course selections. We have instructed senior staff to give notice on our lease for this facility which requires sixty days’ notice, while we deliberate our final budget numbers. We are inviting community members, parents and staff to attend our next learning forum on May 13th at 7:00 pm in the Student Support Services building (annex), School Board Office, Oliver. The learning forum will look at the 2015/2016 budget and we will be receiving input into our budget at this forum.
In 2013 the school district entered into an agreement with the Yukon Department of Education to provide distributed learning services to students in grades K-12. In 2013/2014, approximately 12 students enrolled with YouLearn and the district received $75,000 from the program. The program has grown in 2014/2015 to 24 elementary students and has generated revenue of $144,000 for the district this school year.
The district will be supporting secondary schools in the training and licensing for My BluePrint for the 2015-2016 school year. This is a web-based educational planning tool to assist students in post-secondary and career goals and choices including guidance in courses to take and up-to-date information of post-secondary requirements and prerequisites. It is interactive with the information in MyEducation BC and promises to be a helpful tool to educators, parents and students. We will soon be training school counselors and educators working with grad transitions.
This year’s results for the Middle years Development Instrument (MDI) for grades 4 and 7 are due out later this month. This is the district’s second year for grade 4 and the first year for grade 7. MDI is a questionnaire that goes beyond academics by focusing on the thoughts, feelings and experiences of children inside and outside of school. Experiences in the middle years have critical and long lasting
effects on brain development, resiliency and success. Research continues to show that children’s social and emotional well-being affects how they learn. On Thursday, May 14th from 1-3 pm in the School Board annex, we will look at the results for the district, check them against last year’s grade 4 results and talk in smaller groups about next steps and local actions. This meeting is open to administrators, teachers representing each school, parents and community members.
The Board of Education met with our MLA, Linda Larson, to share our concerns regarding funding, administrative staffing cuts, the freeze on exempt staff salaries, Bill 11 and also our concerns regarding erosion of the co-governance roles of trustees despite signing a co-governance agreement with the Ministry of Education in December. We are very grateful to her for always finding the time to meet with us. It is our hope that she will continue to advocate for our students on our behalf.
Our Board will be writing a letter to the Minister of Education outlining our district’s budget reductions from 2009. We would like to draw attention to the fact that we have shared services and reduced senior staff since 2009, well before the direction from the Ministry of Education.
Superintendent Young, myself, Mayor Hovanes (Oliver), Sherry Philpot Adhikary (councilor, Keremeos) and Kirsten Mclean (parent and business owner, Osoyoos) attended a meeting at Mt. Boucherie School, Kelowna hosted by the Ministry of Education.
The Ministry asked board chairs to invite one business leader from each community to attend. The forum’s focus was on K-12 innovation. Speakers focused on why the current education system has to change and what the implications for the K-12 system will be. It was good to see that our district offers many of the same innovative opportunities for students as the larger school districts. For me the highlight was definitely the presentations by the students. They showed us how they are learning and practicing 21st Century learning skills. They explained that they ask the “what, why and where” questions at various stages of their class work. We were also given three questions to consider in our community groups. I am proud to say that our district has considered and explored all of the questions with our community partners at various opportunities in the past. We have built a vision for our district with all of our partners, we have partnerships with many private organizations to provide hands-on learning opportunities for our students and we know that we have a commitment from our communities to create more partnerships in the future. We will continue to explore opportunities as we identify different needs in our schools in the future.
Our Board met with Mayors, councillors and RDOS directors on Wednesday April 22nd to share enrollment trends, our budget, EDI (early development index), MDI (middle development index) results and also results from the McCreary report. We do believe that it takes a community to raise a child and by sharing some of our results it might also give other leaders in our communities a better understanding of the needs of families in our communities and we are hopeful that they will keep the challenges that we as a school district face in mind when they have to make important decisions at their respective Councils and Boards. We hope that this was only the first of many meetings and that we will continue to work closely together and collaborate to meet the needs of our students and families in all of our communities.
Trustees attended the BCSTA AGM in Vancouver April 16th to 19th. At the business session, motions were passed that expressed trustees’ frustration with Bill 11, other motions clearly stood in defense of the value and autonomy of locally elected boards and at the heart of most of the motions was the concern of trustees for the continuation of a BC public education system that ensure the rights of all students to a quality public education system.
Should you have any questions, please contact me at 250-498-1333.
Submitted by Marieze Tarr, Chairperson
School District No. 53 (Okanagan Similkameen)