School board meeting September 30, 2014

I attended the meeting tonight and in no particular order are highlights of what is going on at a board level within the school district.

650 Mac book Pro’s have now been leased and delivered to the school district. The 650 laptops delivered are part of a lease of which 800 were ordered initially. They should be delivered to teachers by the end of next week. Interesting as well to point out that Dell laptops will be provided to teachers as an alternative to those needing a windows based platform instead.

Last year, all wireless was completed in all secondary and middle schools.

This year, the school district will finish the infrastructure requirements and wireless internet access will be available in all elementary schools. All teachers will get their laptops and all classes will get their projectors. It should be noted that projectors might be portable until the district gets around to mounting them from the ceilings in the classrooms. The projectors were purchased instead of being leased and the mounting will take place within the classrooms during the 2014/2015 school year.

Ministry updates included a more personalized approach to learning which is so great to hear. Not every child learns the same way at everything. Teachers will have more flexibility in learning outcomes and core competencies and parents will be informed of their child’s progress more than 3-4 times a year at report card time.

Discussions and motions were passed that dealt with the late start of the school year due to the strike. It was decided that the semester initially set at Sept 2/14-Jan 23/15 would now be changed to Sept 22/14-Feb 6/15.

The second semester initially set for Jan 26/15-Jun 25/15 will now be changed to Feb 10/15-June 25/15. There will not be any layover going into a typical summer vacation from school for the kids.

The changes to the semesters for the year results in 81 teaching days in the first semester and 78 in the second semester.

Finally, enrollments in the choice school appears to be down based on initial numbers which have NOT been firmed up yet. (I will report end of month actual numbers.) It appears that middle and elementary schools have numbers that are about the same as last year as a whole and overall, it appears that total enrollment at this point in time, will be down. There were approximately 100 children whose parents decided to instead enroll them in a private school instead of a public one so far, according to the present numbers which are an initial estimate at best.

I finally do apologize if any of my notes are off by a few numbers. I did keep impeccable handwritten notes and next time, I will bring the laptop instead.

Please do comment on your thoughts on the meeting notes above. Do you find it informative and would you like to see updates such as this?

A quote was cited tonight and I close with it now.

“If we teach students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” – John Dewy

Beatrice