Many items to share information on as SD52 Board returns to duty next week

The elected officials of School District 52 will host their first meeting of the 2021-22 school year next week, with the Regular Open Board meeting set for a 7PM start on Tuesday September 14th.

Much like it was for most of the previous school year, next week's session will take place by Zoom, with Tamara Dickens the contact at SD52 to gain your access instructions to the meeting.

The summer period provided for a fair bit of controversy for the District, with a change in the Board make up and a number of still unanswered questions from the 2020-21 school year. 

And before they tackle the challenges of the year ahead, the Board members should provide some further background and clarification as to what has taken place over the last three months.

Among the concerning issues of note, a range of distractions from July. with word of a shake up at the Board of Education with Board Chair James Horne stepping down, replaced though not unanimously it appears by Kate Toye.

Also requiring much more transparency should be the findings of a report into a budget shortfall last year, which it seems has been attributed to the hiring of 10 additional itinerant teachers, the result of the budget woes leading to layoffs at the end of the 2020-21 school year.

The School District for the most part coasted through the summer with few updates on any of those percolating issues and despite the always promising themes of a new school year, the Board members really can't move forward til they clear up the controversies of the past.

One way that they could do that is offer up a vow to be more informative for parents, guardians, students and staff, the exchange of information last year mostly was limited to brief updates of Board meetings, which often seemed to avoid any of the controversial themes.

In late August, the School District was looking for the feedback from the public as to their best options for information sharing, that through a survey.

Hopefully once they decide on a platform of choice, they'll be much more inclined to expand on the amount of information that they provide for the public.

A good start towards that may be to provide for an open live stream without need of prior contact to access it,  as well as a video archive of their Council sessions. 

Something which would allow for a permanent record of their discussions and any comments or concerns that they receive.

For more notes on education in Prince Rupert see our archive page here.

An overview of the rest of the Northwest is also available here.