In an update from School Board officials the highlights of the September 13th School Board meeting were released, with one of the key announcements involving the issue of Transportation Funding in the region.
Approved on Tuesday night was a transportation plan that will put to use 117,000 dollars in funding received from the provincial government.
The distribution of that funding looks as follows:
$85,000 to provide yellow bus service for students of Port Edward and Metlakatla with the District of Port Edward to operate the service.
$!5,000 to reduce the cost of a student bus pass from 40 dollars per month to 30 dollars.
The remaining 17,597 dollars will be distributed at the Superintendent's discretion, to help school's provide bus passes to families in need and to support travel costs for school field trips.
The plan will be submitted to the Ministry of Education for approval.
We provided some background on how the Port Edward/Metlakatla transportation program works in our blog item of last week.
Further information on the local bus pass proposal for students within the City of Prince Rupert can be reviewed here.
The School District also outlined how it plans to redirect its Administrative Savings and Budget adjustments for the year.
The School District received 123,861 dollars from the Province through its Administrative Redirection announcement and SD52 will put that money towards three areas, staffing issues at Charles Hays Secondary School; provisions for improvements in occupational health and safety as well as the area of Educational Assistants.
The School District will also receive $495,086 from the Province's Learning improvement Fund, with SD52 to direct $396,069 for teachers, that money is being used to support classrooms with challenging composition issues.
The remaining $99,017 from the Fund is being allocated to education assistants, who will be receiving additional paid hours through that share of the money.
Board officials also reviewed their submissions to the Ministry of Education as part of their 2017-18 Capital Plan.
The first priority for the School District is the replacement of Prince Rupert Middle School, also on the list for replacement are the Conrad Elementary School facility and the District Services Building.
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| Replacement of Prince Rupert Middle School remains the number one goal for School District 52 and their Capital Plan for 2017-18 |
The list for that program includes: work on the Conrad Elementary School roofing, Two projects for Lax Kxeen elementary and three issues related to the Booth Maintenance Building.
As well, the School District has submitted a Carbon Neutral Program project at Pineridge for consideration.
The Board of Education also discussed how the start of the school year has gone to this point, with students from Kindergarten to Grade 9 now learning from the new curriculum, while Grade 10 to 12 classes also are exploring the new draft curriculum announced for the senior grades.
School District officials reported that there was a decline in enrolment from last year, a situation that was expected by Board officials. And while the numbers may be down, the movement of students between schools in the District and the enrolment of new students at neighbourhood schools has resulted in some very large classes at some locations, an issue that School District administration is looking to address.
The report also firmed up the dates for Board of Education meetings through the year and released the details on some of the policy committee work that had been put in place at the start of the school year.
You can review the full list of items of note from the Board meeting from this information release from SD52.
More background on items of interest on education on the North Coast can be found on our archive page here.
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