Schedule
Thursday, January 24: Emergency PAC Meeting, 6:30 in the library
Friday, January 25: Pro D Day – NO SCHOOL!
Friday, February 1: Spirit Day – Wear your red!
PAC Meeting Tonight
There will be another emergency PAC meeting tonight in the library, from 6:30-8:30pm. Babysitting is provided.
French Immersion Proposal
The VSB meeting was held last night, and they decided to move forward to a consultation phase on this proposal. This means we will need to keep up our efforts to show that these are not good options for our Hudson kids, and help them find better options than they’ve identified.
Things to remember when you are contacting the school board and other officials:
- It is not helpful to trash Lord Strathcona or its surrounding community. The VSB has deemed the school safe for students, and so the argument that it’s not safe for our kids will fall on deaf ears. Worse, some people think it makes us sound like rich snobs, and they tune out any other argument if they hear it. That means they will ignore our very good points about the distance to the school and the disruption to our community.
- Any letters that you forward to the PAC will be kept 100% confidential.
- For any English parents who are not sure which option they prefer, it was brought up at the PAC meeting that before the French track was added, Hudson was actually in danger of being closed due to under-enrollment. It had a 2-person PAC that was struggling to provide any activities at all. In our current PAC, over half of our Executive team volunteers are French parents, including our Hot Lunch Coordinator (who brings in most of our budget ($15,000 each year) and feeds many of our kids twice a week). Due to our fundraising and active PAC volunteers, we provide extra-curricular activities (and subsidies for those who need it), technology like laptops and iPads, and extra classroom activities such as tennis & gymnastics in the gym, Project Chef, Paws of Empathy, and many more. Starting over with less than half the PAC team we currently have will probably mean at least a few years of reduced revenue and activities, as more volunteers will have be recruited and learn the ropes of organizing.
- If you know any families whose children are not yet school-age but will be affected by this proposal (i.e. they would like to do Hudson French or English), please alert them to this proposal and encourage them to write letters.
A big thank you to everyone who has jumped on this issue and advocated for Henry Hudson so far! Especially our PAC Chair Robert Ford, who must be exhausted from all the meetings and interviews he has attended this week. Two more of our Hudson parents were also interviewed on CBC French radio this week – you can listen here.
Activities
Due to unforeseen circumstances, gymnastics is cancelled.