Post by vickysmallman on Apr 13, 2013 8:42:54 GMT -5
Hi everyone - below are my notes from the April 9 subcommittee meeting. If I missed any key points, let me know.
Attending: Richard, Christina, Karla, Lianne, Darcie, Kristin, Megan, Laura, Pam, Trevor, Ursula, Jessica
Report from Lil and Christopher
Lil and Christopher reported on the two working group meetings that have occurred so far. They have largely focused on preliminaries and process. Amanda Farris (CHNA, children at both Elmdale and Devonshire) is chair; Stefan Matiation (HCA, children at Devonshire) is co-chair. There was a lot of discussion re who should be the chair – consensus was it needed to be a community voice, not representing one of the schools.
Role of Chair is not especially formal – a point person for the staff to contact rather than communicating with everyone all the time. Chair will also be spokesperson in terms of dealing with the public. The group is aiming to operate by consensus; they have not yet set a voting structure. Group does not actually have a clear mandate from the board – they are discussing that. There are a lot of different priorities and perspectives and we have to be cognisant of all the wants and needs.
Who’s in the group – Hilson, Elmdale, Devonshire, Connaught, Cambridge, Elgin. Centennial will be invited. Fisher Park has not yet been able to participate; having issues finding a rep. Gowling has not yet participated. Theory is that Gowling will be included in a future ARC process. Community – Westboro beach, Mechanicsville, Dalhousie, Hintonburg, Hampton Park, West Wellington. No rep yet from Champlain Park. Trustee, Superintendent of Ed, Director of Facilities, planning staff all attend meetings, which are open to the public. Meeting schedule not yet set – there is a resistance to meeting weekly from some of the other groups.
Discussion regarding Fisher Park Recreation Council: not directly involved; we need to make sure we include them in future outreach and other discussions.
Mandate: many of our preconceptions about the process were blown out of the water last night. This is not just about Devonshire and Elmdale – this is about schools ranging from Hilson to Elgin and may inolve a lot of issues, not just ours. It does not appear to be a process where we can take a proposal forward and say this is what we’d like – everyone will feed in ideas and solutions and the Working Group will whittle them down. When there are 3 or four, staff will run scenarios.
Mandate: The Working Committee will strive to achieve a set of recommendations that will support the objective of providing students with local access to programs and balanced enrolments across study area schools. Moreover, the Working Committee should focus on solutions that will provide for long-term accommodation stability for at least five years while at the same time supporting walkability and neighbourhood schools that will make for the most effective use of District facilities involved in the area study. In addition, the Working Committee will have regard to the implementation of Full Day Kindergarten Programming board wide.
Lil and Christopher tried to get Gowling off the table. There is general acceptance that Gowling is not part of the solution; there will be some kind of accommodation review for other neighbouring schools. One of the schools wanted more info, however, so it’s not yet off the table.
Process: Public meeting in June will discuss a few options; comments from public to be submitted before June 30. Working Group’s Report will be prepared in the Fall, discussed by Trustees’ Committee of the Whole in October. Staff will make recommendation in November and final decision will be in December after a November meeting for public delegations.
Staff recommendation will take the WG recommendation and evaluate costs, feasibility, etc. Unlikely to be a separate solution at that point. The objective should be to have the reports reflect and support each other.
Staff have a process in terms of how they run a scenario; takes a staff person 3-4 days. They will be looking for broad themes in the ideas that are submitted and building scenarios with the WG based on those broad themes. Will likely not do more than 3 or 4 scenarios. Laura expressed an interest in getting more details about their process.
Ideal school structures – school board spent lots of time talking about this. These are what they strive for but can’t always achieve
Elementary – 2 classes per grade per school (600 students) – this doesn’t work for most of the schools in our catchment
Natural Breaks in grades (JK-3, 4-6, 7-8) in terms of child development. But this doesn’t make for a sustainable school. Fisher Park is an example – 2 years is not enough to create a community of learners, teachers don’t get to know kids enough in 2 years to provide guidance. Natural breaks K-6, k-8, 7-12, 9-12 have the most success.
No matter what the model, however, teachers will always make it work.
There are some inconsistencies around attitudes to dual tracking.
Notion of community schools – access to a variety of learning opportunities within one school. Great ideal but hard to implement in smaller schools.
We’ve looked at capacity (overall number of students); staff is more interested in classroom utilization. Numbers not always an indication of whether all the classrooms are in use. Need to have buffer room – don’t try to get 100% utilization.
Observations on other schools. Cambridge parents are concerned about maintaining the school as english only. But numbers are declining and the principal expressed interest in dual track. Dalhousie Community Association made the point that lots of younger families looking forward to local school, walkable, with programming options. Cambridge lost 2 teachers to declining enrolments. Cambridge was also involved in the Glebe ARC and it wasn’t a great experience.
Connaught would like to address declining enrolments; they are interested in concept of community schooling and access to multiple programs at the school. They would be in favour of adding programming to Connaught. However there is concern about creating classes of kids in dual track schools. Don’t want to make it seem that kids in english program are those who couldn’t succeed in EFI. You can’t take integration for granted.
Question: are there dual track schools where the integration has been successful?
Concern: Quality of french outcome may be improved in single track schools. Can we get some data?
Observation and question for later discussion: some of the values are in tension with each other. What are the filters we want to apply when we look at scenarios?
Elgin Street is dual track school; one of smallest in the city. Like us, small footprint. They like their dual track program; their numbers are balanced. They were also involved in Glebe process; they are comfortable with busing to send kids to the programs they want.
Hilson has a concern about MFI sustainability; they are worried a new MFI program may bleed some of their enrollment. They have observed that parents have trouble transferring their kids in grade 4 – perhaps they should be encouraged to decide re MFI in JK and stay at one school throughout. Their MFI program hollows out their English program from 4-6.
Key themes: desire to improve EFI access while maintaining sustainable, vibrant English programs. Overall concern re declining population in downtown schools – need to bolster enrolment
Values and Principles
Vicky will combine the Values and Principles we discussed before the holidays with some additional thoughts by Ursula and post them on the Forum for discussion and confirmation at the next meeting. The Values and Principles have already been shared with the OCDSB Working Group, who will also discuss them at their next meeting. The Working Group seemed in general agreement with our document.
Subcommittee Roles, Responsibilities, Process
Quick updates from our working groups
a) Fisher Park questions have been submitted by Chris to Planners. No answers yet.
b) Alternative group has met – no desire to look at one school only; improve programming across the board. Feeling that FP is not feasible for JK kids in 2014
c) Data – need insight based on enrolment numbers; get a sense of how they run their scenarios
d) Group toured Gowling and met with principal. It is a really nice school; just too far.
Suggestion: Can we do tours of schools? Perhaps through Doors Open ottawa? We can suggest the schools get involved; it’s in early June.
There was a brief discussion about collaborating with Elmdale parents on particular solutions, especially involving Fisher Park.
There General agreement that we streamline our process so that the subgroup are folded into the main Subcommittee for the time being. This will help simplify discussions and decision-making.
Lil and Christopher are our reps to the OCDSB working group. They liaise with Devonshire parents via this Subcommittee and their contributions are guided by our input.
The Devonshire Accommodation Review Subcommittee is a creation of the school council. Participation is open to any parent (or soon-to-be Devonshire parent). The subcommittee reports regularly to the School Council and parents may also participate in the discussion via the online forum.
If we get to a point where we want to make a decision, we either present it as a recommendaion of the Subcommittee or bring it to the School Council for discussion and decision so our Chairs can present the position on behalf of all the parents.
Communications and Parent Engagement
OCDSB WG will be sending out a communique with an email address set up. They’ll send out a backpack express via the principals. They’ll also promote via KT, Centretown Buzz, etc.
Devonshire’s Subcommittee will also circulate a central email address via the newsletter and backpack express and provide some communication to parents about our process and how they can get involved.
Decision to provide a report/update to School Council on April 30. Prepare a presentation for April 30 that can also be circulated online. Potential for open meetings/workshops on specific solutions in May and before the public meeting in June. Lobbying strategy will need to be developed for the fall, once the WG’s report has been submitted to trustees.
Subcommittee will schedule weekly meetings and cancel if we need to. Wait for 2 weeks for the OCDSB WG to get their feet wet and then get started.
The committee discussed Jessica’s suggestion that we may want to get some perspective from Glebe parents regarding the “school switch” decision. No conclusions; we will discuss this again later.
Timeline:
April to Mid May – develop scenarios in Subcommittee, collaborating with parents from other schools as required
Mid-may to Public meeting – consult parent community (and perhaps parents who intend to become part of the Devonshire community or who live in the current catchment)
Public meeting in June – individual parents to email OCDSB with their feedback and ideas; we would like to have a preferred option we’d like parents to recommend at that point
April 30, May 28 – discussion at school council meetings (report and possible scenarios April 30; suggestions for preferred scenarios May 28?)
Parent and community engagement will continue in the fall.
Transition for Interim Solution
No info yet from OCDSB on transition for JK folks next year – we will follow up.
Vicky will circulate a Doodle poll for meeting week of April 23. At that meeting we’ll hear from reps and decide what we’re going to present on April 30. Narrow down to a few solutions and perhaps identify a few discussion questions
Raised but not discussed in depth: how to engage people whose kids are not yet in school but who have an interest in the outcome
Attending: Richard, Christina, Karla, Lianne, Darcie, Kristin, Megan, Laura, Pam, Trevor, Ursula, Jessica
Report from Lil and Christopher
Lil and Christopher reported on the two working group meetings that have occurred so far. They have largely focused on preliminaries and process. Amanda Farris (CHNA, children at both Elmdale and Devonshire) is chair; Stefan Matiation (HCA, children at Devonshire) is co-chair. There was a lot of discussion re who should be the chair – consensus was it needed to be a community voice, not representing one of the schools.
Role of Chair is not especially formal – a point person for the staff to contact rather than communicating with everyone all the time. Chair will also be spokesperson in terms of dealing with the public. The group is aiming to operate by consensus; they have not yet set a voting structure. Group does not actually have a clear mandate from the board – they are discussing that. There are a lot of different priorities and perspectives and we have to be cognisant of all the wants and needs.
Who’s in the group – Hilson, Elmdale, Devonshire, Connaught, Cambridge, Elgin. Centennial will be invited. Fisher Park has not yet been able to participate; having issues finding a rep. Gowling has not yet participated. Theory is that Gowling will be included in a future ARC process. Community – Westboro beach, Mechanicsville, Dalhousie, Hintonburg, Hampton Park, West Wellington. No rep yet from Champlain Park. Trustee, Superintendent of Ed, Director of Facilities, planning staff all attend meetings, which are open to the public. Meeting schedule not yet set – there is a resistance to meeting weekly from some of the other groups.
Discussion regarding Fisher Park Recreation Council: not directly involved; we need to make sure we include them in future outreach and other discussions.
Mandate: many of our preconceptions about the process were blown out of the water last night. This is not just about Devonshire and Elmdale – this is about schools ranging from Hilson to Elgin and may inolve a lot of issues, not just ours. It does not appear to be a process where we can take a proposal forward and say this is what we’d like – everyone will feed in ideas and solutions and the Working Group will whittle them down. When there are 3 or four, staff will run scenarios.
Mandate: The Working Committee will strive to achieve a set of recommendations that will support the objective of providing students with local access to programs and balanced enrolments across study area schools. Moreover, the Working Committee should focus on solutions that will provide for long-term accommodation stability for at least five years while at the same time supporting walkability and neighbourhood schools that will make for the most effective use of District facilities involved in the area study. In addition, the Working Committee will have regard to the implementation of Full Day Kindergarten Programming board wide.
Lil and Christopher tried to get Gowling off the table. There is general acceptance that Gowling is not part of the solution; there will be some kind of accommodation review for other neighbouring schools. One of the schools wanted more info, however, so it’s not yet off the table.
Process: Public meeting in June will discuss a few options; comments from public to be submitted before June 30. Working Group’s Report will be prepared in the Fall, discussed by Trustees’ Committee of the Whole in October. Staff will make recommendation in November and final decision will be in December after a November meeting for public delegations.
Staff recommendation will take the WG recommendation and evaluate costs, feasibility, etc. Unlikely to be a separate solution at that point. The objective should be to have the reports reflect and support each other.
Staff have a process in terms of how they run a scenario; takes a staff person 3-4 days. They will be looking for broad themes in the ideas that are submitted and building scenarios with the WG based on those broad themes. Will likely not do more than 3 or 4 scenarios. Laura expressed an interest in getting more details about their process.
Ideal school structures – school board spent lots of time talking about this. These are what they strive for but can’t always achieve
Elementary – 2 classes per grade per school (600 students) – this doesn’t work for most of the schools in our catchment
Natural Breaks in grades (JK-3, 4-6, 7-8) in terms of child development. But this doesn’t make for a sustainable school. Fisher Park is an example – 2 years is not enough to create a community of learners, teachers don’t get to know kids enough in 2 years to provide guidance. Natural breaks K-6, k-8, 7-12, 9-12 have the most success.
No matter what the model, however, teachers will always make it work.
There are some inconsistencies around attitudes to dual tracking.
Notion of community schools – access to a variety of learning opportunities within one school. Great ideal but hard to implement in smaller schools.
We’ve looked at capacity (overall number of students); staff is more interested in classroom utilization. Numbers not always an indication of whether all the classrooms are in use. Need to have buffer room – don’t try to get 100% utilization.
Observations on other schools. Cambridge parents are concerned about maintaining the school as english only. But numbers are declining and the principal expressed interest in dual track. Dalhousie Community Association made the point that lots of younger families looking forward to local school, walkable, with programming options. Cambridge lost 2 teachers to declining enrolments. Cambridge was also involved in the Glebe ARC and it wasn’t a great experience.
Connaught would like to address declining enrolments; they are interested in concept of community schooling and access to multiple programs at the school. They would be in favour of adding programming to Connaught. However there is concern about creating classes of kids in dual track schools. Don’t want to make it seem that kids in english program are those who couldn’t succeed in EFI. You can’t take integration for granted.
Question: are there dual track schools where the integration has been successful?
Concern: Quality of french outcome may be improved in single track schools. Can we get some data?
Observation and question for later discussion: some of the values are in tension with each other. What are the filters we want to apply when we look at scenarios?
Elgin Street is dual track school; one of smallest in the city. Like us, small footprint. They like their dual track program; their numbers are balanced. They were also involved in Glebe process; they are comfortable with busing to send kids to the programs they want.
Hilson has a concern about MFI sustainability; they are worried a new MFI program may bleed some of their enrollment. They have observed that parents have trouble transferring their kids in grade 4 – perhaps they should be encouraged to decide re MFI in JK and stay at one school throughout. Their MFI program hollows out their English program from 4-6.
Key themes: desire to improve EFI access while maintaining sustainable, vibrant English programs. Overall concern re declining population in downtown schools – need to bolster enrolment
Values and Principles
Vicky will combine the Values and Principles we discussed before the holidays with some additional thoughts by Ursula and post them on the Forum for discussion and confirmation at the next meeting. The Values and Principles have already been shared with the OCDSB Working Group, who will also discuss them at their next meeting. The Working Group seemed in general agreement with our document.
Subcommittee Roles, Responsibilities, Process
Quick updates from our working groups
a) Fisher Park questions have been submitted by Chris to Planners. No answers yet.
b) Alternative group has met – no desire to look at one school only; improve programming across the board. Feeling that FP is not feasible for JK kids in 2014
c) Data – need insight based on enrolment numbers; get a sense of how they run their scenarios
d) Group toured Gowling and met with principal. It is a really nice school; just too far.
Suggestion: Can we do tours of schools? Perhaps through Doors Open ottawa? We can suggest the schools get involved; it’s in early June.
There was a brief discussion about collaborating with Elmdale parents on particular solutions, especially involving Fisher Park.
There General agreement that we streamline our process so that the subgroup are folded into the main Subcommittee for the time being. This will help simplify discussions and decision-making.
Lil and Christopher are our reps to the OCDSB working group. They liaise with Devonshire parents via this Subcommittee and their contributions are guided by our input.
The Devonshire Accommodation Review Subcommittee is a creation of the school council. Participation is open to any parent (or soon-to-be Devonshire parent). The subcommittee reports regularly to the School Council and parents may also participate in the discussion via the online forum.
If we get to a point where we want to make a decision, we either present it as a recommendaion of the Subcommittee or bring it to the School Council for discussion and decision so our Chairs can present the position on behalf of all the parents.
Communications and Parent Engagement
OCDSB WG will be sending out a communique with an email address set up. They’ll send out a backpack express via the principals. They’ll also promote via KT, Centretown Buzz, etc.
Devonshire’s Subcommittee will also circulate a central email address via the newsletter and backpack express and provide some communication to parents about our process and how they can get involved.
Decision to provide a report/update to School Council on April 30. Prepare a presentation for April 30 that can also be circulated online. Potential for open meetings/workshops on specific solutions in May and before the public meeting in June. Lobbying strategy will need to be developed for the fall, once the WG’s report has been submitted to trustees.
Subcommittee will schedule weekly meetings and cancel if we need to. Wait for 2 weeks for the OCDSB WG to get their feet wet and then get started.
The committee discussed Jessica’s suggestion that we may want to get some perspective from Glebe parents regarding the “school switch” decision. No conclusions; we will discuss this again later.
Timeline:
April to Mid May – develop scenarios in Subcommittee, collaborating with parents from other schools as required
Mid-may to Public meeting – consult parent community (and perhaps parents who intend to become part of the Devonshire community or who live in the current catchment)
Public meeting in June – individual parents to email OCDSB with their feedback and ideas; we would like to have a preferred option we’d like parents to recommend at that point
April 30, May 28 – discussion at school council meetings (report and possible scenarios April 30; suggestions for preferred scenarios May 28?)
Parent and community engagement will continue in the fall.
Transition for Interim Solution
No info yet from OCDSB on transition for JK folks next year – we will follow up.
Vicky will circulate a Doodle poll for meeting week of April 23. At that meeting we’ll hear from reps and decide what we’re going to present on April 30. Narrow down to a few solutions and perhaps identify a few discussion questions
Raised but not discussed in depth: how to engage people whose kids are not yet in school but who have an interest in the outcome