Friday, March 9, 2018

Kanata land issue, School Calendar for 2018-19 make for dominant themes from March School District 52 meeting

The School District 52 Board held their March meeting this week


While five items of interest made for this month's review of the work of the School District 52 Board, only one item really jumped off the page of the summary of the March gathering

That would be the talking points related to the collapse of a plan to sell the old Kanata School lands to a developer, making for an evolution of what has not been the best relationship between the City and School District.

Such is the nature of  things related to the Kanata issue, that Board Chair Tina Last will now be writing a formal letter of disappointment on behalf of the School District, addressed to Prince Rupert Mayor Lee Brain and City Council.

The March meeting notes provide for a bit of a history update on the status of the proposed land sale,

SD 52's update on the Kanata land sale process
(click to enlarge)

The school district had previously noted that it had hoped to take the revenue generated from the land sale to put towards a number of capital projects, plans which would appear to still be on hold while they now return to the process of finding a buyer for the now decommissioned school property.

Ms. Last made note of the School District's disappointment on how the zoning issues had been handled by the City as part of the March 6th Report.

"At the public meeting of City Council, March 7, 2016, Councillor Mirau was clear that the City needed to be open for business ... The failure of the rezoning process for Kanata school property is a sad day for the district and is disappointing for a community that needs another residential development"

Other notes of Tuesday's Board meeting included a salute to Aaliyah Mahboubi who represented the School District spectacularly at the Taiwan International Science Fair, with the Charles Hays Secondary student claiming a Third Place Prize in the International competition.

Her project which went by the title of "Microbial Film Power Generation" explained how Ms. Mahboubi was able to generate sufficient electricity from a local bog to operate low power devices.

Board Chair Last took note of the success of the Grade nine student during Tuesday's session:

"Aaliyah's passion and motivation to improve our world left me speechless ... The Board looked at what she has accomplished by Grade 9, and has high expectations that she will be a driving force in making our world more sustainable in the future"

The School Board also settled on the 2018-19 Calendar issue, which for the third consecutive year will feature a two week Spring Break from March 18 - 29, 2019.

The calendar also has included the movement of Family Day to the Third Monday in February, added another Non-Instructional Day for curriculum presentation and revised some of the other dates for Non Instructional Days.

The board advised that some of the non instructional days in February of next year may be subject to adjustment should the All Native Tournament shift their tournament dates to the third week of February 2019.

SD52 has set the dates for Spring Break and Non Instructional
Days for the 2018-19 School year

(click to enlarge)

Cross-Boundary requests from 2017-18 were also discussed at the Tuesday session, with the District noting that requests were delayed this year while they considered the implications of the restoration of class size and composition language in the teacher collective agreement.

With that in mind, cross boundary requests for the 2018-19 school year are still awaiting approval, with the District hopeful of the approval process moving forward by May of this year.

You can review the full Report from this month's School Board session  here.

Fore more items of interest related to education on the North Coast see our archive page here.


Cross posted from the North Coast Review

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