New Westminster school board sticking with online meetings

Virtual meetings will be the way of the future for the New Westminster school board – but education committee meetings will be held in person and in local schools.

The School District 40 board has settled on a new approach to meetings in the 2022/23 school year after two years of meeting exclusively online throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

After much debate at their April 12 operations committee meeting, trustees revisited the issue at the April 26 board meeting and agreed to a new hybrid plan.

Under the plan, open school board meetings will continue to be held virtually on the fourth Tuesday of each month, as they are now.

Committee meetings, however, will change.

Education committee meetings will now be held in person, rotating through SD40 school sites for five meetings per year. Those meetings will start at 3:30 p.m. to allow staff and students to make presentations to board members.

Just one education committee meeting, in June, will be held virtually. That one will start at 5 p.m.

“We need to get back to at least one meeting in person,” said trustee Dee Beattie, who chairs the education committee. “We need to do it where we can meet with the students directly and see what’s going on in the school.”

Operations committee meetings will be held online on the same nights as education meetings; they’ll be scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

The new schedule eliminates two committee meeting nights, in September and in January, but there will continue to be regular board meetings in those months.

Trustee Anita Ansari said the new schedule provides a good balance of in-person and virtual meetings.

The school district opted to keep a hybrid schedule because the level of participation by parents and community members had gone up over the course of the pandemic.

“The public engagement we have seen as a result to pivoting to a virtual mode of communication for both committee and board meetings due to the pandemic has increased dramatically in contrast to our previous in-person meetings,” secretary-treasurer Bettina Ketcham said in an April 12 report. “The level of engagement by all stakeholder groups is an area the board would like to maintain as we move into the future.”

The next school board meeting is Tuesday, May 10, with all meetings being held virtually: education committee at 5 p.m., operations committee at 6:30 p.m. and a special open board meeting at 9 p.m. You will be able to find agendas and meeting links at the SD40 website.

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