School Board Meeting ....

Fernie had its annual turn at hosting a board meeting last night, and as usual attendance was less than capacity. From my seat in the public gallery, there were two of us, myself and a parent from Fernie.

What news came out of this meeting? Well, the preliminary 'numbers' for next year show that expenses could be nearly $1,000,000 (as in 'one million dollars') more than revenue. We all know that means "cutbacks". What we don't know is "from where". As usual, Mr. Norum is doing an excellent job of containing costs and preventing deficits and some of the other ("evil") accounting tricks that have happened in other districts.

Student enrollment in SD5 is down 9 student FTE from January, and down 85 from September 09. International students = 68 and they are not included in my figures.

The meeting was mostly taken up with discussion around whether or not to fund all-day K at Highlands Elementary School (HES) - which currently has not been allocated any of the 200 'seats' being funded by the Government for the 2010-2011 school year. The discussion revolved around fairness 'to all', and even included disagreement over the cost to the district of the additional teaching and support time (would it be $54,000, or $120,000+...) - agreement could not be found on a 'figure' to use. No mention was made of the fact that at HES you have the Chairperson of the Provincial Primary Teachers' Association, one of the people involved in the creation of the all-day K implementation plan, one of the people who is in the lead of various other primary program planning.... Certainly there seemed to be wide-spread agreement that all-day K is good for many (most) children!

In the end, the trustees defeated the motion, so as of this morning, HES will need to wait one more year....

To end on a really positive note, the Superintendent was extremely complementary toward teachers and CUPE, proudly praising many folks who have contributed so much to education - it was fantastic to see (but not surprising, as he does this regularly). During the "Trustee Bouquets" session, they too praised teachers and CUPE, as well as our students who participated in the BC Winter Games and so on.