There’s a school board meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 29, and here are a few of the highlights from the agenda:
2019/20 school calendar
School district associate superintendent Maryam Naser will present the proposed school calendar for the 2019/20 school year to the board on Tuesday.
If the board approves the draft, it will be posted to the district’s website for a period 28 days during which time the community is welcome to provide feedback.
The final draft will be presented to the board for approval on March 12.
Non-replacement staffing numbers
The district’s director of human resources Robert Weston will present the monthly report on teacher and education assistant absences.
In December, there were 67 teacher absences that weren’t covered by teachers on call and had to be covered by non-enrolling teachers (including teacher librarians and learning-support teachers) or school administration. For education assistants, there were 263 total absences in December and, of those, 100 went uncovered, according to the report.
Items that need official approval
The following items are things that have already been approved by either the operations policy and planning committee or the education policy and planning committee and have been forwarded to the school board for final approval.
Menstrual initiative: spearheaded by a Vancouver mom and Douglas College geology instructor Selina Tribe, the initiative would see coin-free dispensers for pads and tampons installed in all girls’ and universal washrooms in all schools.
Tribe, who has been going district-to-district urging school boards to install these machines so that all girls have access to the products when they need them.
“These are inexpensive items; they range from $200 to $300 to get it installed. They don’t require coins, and then all you need to do is stock it with these single-use paper products that should be considered just the same and as essential as toilet paper,” she told the Record earlier this month.
Special education review: presented to the education policy and planning committee on Jan. 8 by trustee Maya Russell, this is a comprehensive review of the district’s special education services and programs.
It also calls for the creation of an advisory group to oversee the review. The group would include union members from both CUPE409 and the New Westminster Teachers’ Union, parents and caregivers of students will special needs, and trustees.
“In New Westminster we have great schools, we’ve got great teachers and wonderful staff, and we have exceptional students. We have, I think, a big opportunity to serve our students better in the area of special education,” Russell told trustees.
Trustee remuneration: Jan. 1 not only marked the beginning of a new year, it also marked the implementation of a new tax regulation that affects school trustees’ pay. Prior to Jan. 1, 33 per cent of a trustee’s stipend wasn’t taxed, but now the entire stipend is taxable.
Trustees across the region are coming up with different ways to recoup some of the income they’ll lose because of these new regulations, including the New Westminster school board.
On Tuesday, trustees will be asked to vote on a motion put forward at the Jan. 15 operations policy and planning committee asking staff to find out how other districts are dealing with the tax changes.
The school board meeting is on Tuesday, Jan. 29 at 7:30 p.m.at the school board office, 811 Ontario St. Follow me (Cayley) Tuesday night on Twitter for live updates from the meeting.
