DPAC News

The latest DPAC newsletter, which includes a calendar of November events at the VSB and some recent education news, is available here.
The newly elected VSB board of trustees is chaired by Janet Fraser of the Green Party. The trustee liaison to DPAC is Lisa Dominato of the NPA. The trustee liaison to Hudson is Judy Zaichkowsky, who is the liaison to both Kitsilano and Killarney Secondary schools and all their feeder elementary schools (13 schools in all).
The current VSB French Immersion program review committee, on which two DPAC parent representatives are serving, will report and make recommendations on December 6 to VSB’s Committee III (Educational and Student Services Committee). This review is not focused on either restoring the 20% of French Immersion (FI) kindergarten spaces cut at the beginning of this school year or on building capacity for FI in the long term. Instead it is looking at ways to increase the equity of access to FI across the city – in some geographical areas an application to FI is much more likely to be accepted than in others – and considering either altering catchment boundaries or removing catchment boundaries altogether. A second, future part of the FI program review will focus on curriculum. Canadian Parents for French has already begun advocacy work directed at the new board of trustees pointing out the campaign promises of all candidates to work to restore the cut spaces for September 2018, which are not addressed in this current work.
The next DPAC general meeting on Thursday, November 23 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm, will include a workshop open to all parents and guardians on the new reporting model for students currently being used from K to grade 9. The panel will consist of representatives from the VSB, the provincial Ministry of Education, both the elementary teachers’ and secondary teachers’ unions, and the admissions department of UBC. Registration is requested to help DPAC plan for space and childcare

Items of interest

The provincial all-party committee, which collected public input on priorities for the next provincial budget, has released its report. As in the past few years, the public put a significant priority on reform of the funding model for K-12 public education and providing adequate funding for a quality system. You can see the committee’s recommendations here.
The Vancouver School Board’s latest proposed capital plan includes a potential timetable for completion of the remaining 58 seismic upgrades in the city over the next nine years. Hudson is #11 on this list, with study of options for mitigation proposed to begin the second year of the plan. We can expect a provincial announcement on a funding decision about this plan on March 2018, once the next budget is in place.
BCCPAC’s latest “Our Voice” newsletter, including an interview with the new Minister of Education, information about gaming grants and the provincial Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity policy, is available here.
BCCPAC has also released the results of their recent province-wide survey of parents of special needs children who are not receiving a full day of education. Check it out here.