Dec 11th School Board meeting summary

Improved Aboriginal and Special Needs achievement rates, 5 new board approved Secondary elective courses, stakeholder priorities for educational investment and a need to find $600,000 in budget cuts to fund a 3% CUPE support staff salary increase were the main topics of discussion at the December 11th board meeting.

More Tough Choices
The School District is once again facing tough choices related to budgets outside the normal budget cycle. The Ministry of Education, following its Cooperative Gains Mandate, is anticipating a 3% increase in annual wages for CUPE staff and is asking all school districts across the Province to tell them how they would, without raising fees or cutting core services, achieve budget cuts equivalent to the salary increases by mid-January. For North Vancouver School District this would amount to about a $600,000 budget cut. More discussion on this can be expected early in January but for a District already running a lean operation this will result in some very tough choices.

The Superintendent's Report on Achievement for 2012/13
This annual report looks at a number of comparative indicators such as graduation rates to measure the overall academic success of the School District in a number of areas. It appears from the result that the overall graduation rate for all student's appears to have plateaued at about 84~86% (slightly above the BC average of 82%).

However the District is concerned that while they have had some success with an increase in the Aboriginal completion rates from 49% to 61% this rate and that of special needs students (62%) remains stubbornly below the overall graduation rate for all students.

The full report provides a lot more information on the programs the District is working on to improve the success of our children starting with early literacy support such as the StrongStart centers and continuing with a variety of supports.

The District thinks changes to the community learning program and other recently introduced initiatives will help increase the success of our students and plans to continue monitoring the effectiveness of their efforts through these academic achievement reports.

Board Approved Courses
At the secondary level, the board is able to approve elective courses developed by teachers with particular interests or to support students with specific needs. These courses are for credit courses outside the standard curriculum. For the coming year the board has approved 5 new courses.

• Improvisation 10 @ Carson Graham Secondary
• Self-Efficacy 11 @ Mountainside Secondary
• Sustainable Environmental Education 11 @ Carson Graham
• Principles of Relational Skills 11 @ All Secondary Schools
• Peer Coaching and Mentoring 11 @ All Secondary Schools

The board package contains a full description of these courses, the delivery models and curriculum. Seeing theses course laid out the way they are with all the units involved and the expected outcomes defined is very helpful in understanding how education is designed and how courses are assessed before being implemented in the district

Most of the debate around these courses centered on the need to teach students skills such as self efficacy and relational skills at an earlier age than Grade 11. The challenge is where to fit these into the curriculum and there seemed to be a strong case for introducing versions of these courses for earlier grades if they are successful at the grade 11 level.

Priority Educational Needs
The Superintendent presented a summary of the priority educational needs submissions from each of the partner groups (CUPE, NOVA, NVTA and NorthVanPAC). More than anything the summary in the board package shows that there are many areas in need of attention across the District caused largely by many years of very tight budgets. Infrastructure spending, special needs support, the introduction of new technology and providing more time and capacity for teachers, administration and staff to do the work they need to do to maintain quality education are all identified and desired by the groups. How this can be achieved is unclear but people clearly recognize a large set of needs.