Elementary Working Group - Recommendations for Meetings #2&3

After representing NVPAC in the first discussion in the Windsor FOS Policy 610 Working Group discussions I thought I would share my process recommendations for the remaining two elementary working group meetings. 


My reason for making these recommendations is to help parents to have an effective discussion of the situations for the children at each of the schools next year. In particular parents want the Windsor FOS and the Fromme discussions to focus on the specific alternatives for the schools in question. 


To support the discussion of the school situations, the next meeting should consider the following questions:
1. Are these the right schools to consider for closure and what other schools could be looked at?
2. Are there other student populations that could fill up the schools to address the enrolment and budget issues?
3. For each school under consideration (Plymouth, Blueridge, Seymour Heights, Fromme, Other?), if the school were closed where would the students go next year and what would those schools and the student experience look like (class sizes etc)?

To support this it would be useful for the working groups to have the following information:
1. Rationale for closure of each school
2. The demographics of each school under consideration and all potential receiving schools (the numbers should be total #'s and for each grade + class), they should also include breakdowns of special needs children in each class and which catchment the students come from.
3. School configurations (# of classrooms available) for each school as well as other facilities and building condition information.
4. Demographics for each catchment, where do students in each catchment go (which school, french immersion, private school, etc.). Its likely impossible but if we had an idea of the distribution of children around the catchment that would be useful to understand the impacts on potential receiving schools.

For the 3rd meeting, the group should be enabled to focus on the transition implications. In my opinion there are two main questions that need to be asked for each school at that meeting:
1. What are the aspects of the school and its culture (large and small) that need to be preserved, and how might that be accomplished.
2. What are the concerns that need to be addressed to help students move to another school, and how might those concerns be addressed.