Walter Byj
October 13, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON
Presiding as the newly installed Director of Education, Stuart Miller passed his initial test with flying colours. Although there were not many actionable items on Wednesday’s agenda, it was nevertheless full.
The Program Viability Committee is struggling with the impact that French immersion is having on the English program. Parents in the Region clearly want their children in French immersion classes – planning for and managing that process is easier said than done.
The public school board has given this issue a lot of time and attention and has now moved to the point where the public consultation process can begin. Getting a stronger fix on just what the public wants and then finding the teachers needed to deliver a French program is proving to be a bit of a challenge.
The Gazette will pass along more information including times, dates and location of public meetings.
There is a review of how the board creates its policies and how they are reviewed on a going forward basis taking place. Background material will be posted on the board’s web site – the Gazette will watch for the document and keep you informed.
The governing principles of the Board are thought to be in need of some clarification. The unfortunate part of this review process is that once the background documents are placed on the board web site they will remain there “for a minimum of 25 days”, which in this busy world is not a lot of time. And given the mess that the board calls a web site – finding the document might be a challenge.
Now that Miller is the Director of Education he was given unanimous approval by the board to advertise internally and externally for the position of Associate Director.
Director Miller reported that the Community Partnership Policy will be getting a closer look – this is the policy that looks at the optimal use of the Board’s space and how they make that space available to the public. When the policy was posted for public feed back there were just two responses.
The request for feed back on the Trustee Expense Policy Feedback did even worse – there wasn’t even one comment.
Jeff Blackwell (Interim Executive Officer- Human Resources) presented the latest Halton enrollment numbers with elementary schools up 127 students to 44,134 while the secondary population grew to 17,632 showing an increase of 134 students.
Gary Cullen (Superintendent of Facility Services) presented the Annual Testing Report, the Closing the Gap Update Report and the Elementary School Design Guidelines report . The discussion points and comments on each of these reports will be reported shortly.
For those parents that have children that will be attending kindergarten next year, be on the lookout for a flyer that will be welcoming new students with special nights beginning in November. Scott Podrebarac (Superintendent of Schools) said the theme of the flyer and nights will be “Calling All Three Year Olds” and will reflect the board’s efforts to reach out to Halton parents before their children attend school by having four special nights where the parents and their children can visit their future school and learn of the benefits being offered. This should make the first day in September much easier for the student.
