Friday, September 4, 2009
September Newsletter - Back to School, Budget, H1N1 and More
We are back in session as of September 8th, and as we welcome students and families we remember how proud we are to be part of a public education system that has so many successes to celebrate. We are also deliberate and strategic about how we face our challenges, some of which are captured in my September newsletter. Although the provincial budget protected the core operating grants for school districts, other cuts will have real impacts on our day to day operations this year, including the loss of the annual facilities grant. You can read about the loss of the AFG and more by checking the BCSTA (school trustees) website. You will also see in the September newsletter, as well as on our district website, updates on how we are preparing for any possibility of H1N1 influenza. As usual, feel free to post comments here. I am interested to know what is on your mind.
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6 comments:
Speaking from the perspective of a parent, after the first few days of school... I can only say I am impressed with how the financial challenges and changes have been handled and how all effort has been made to minimize its influence on the classroom environment.
As a Grade One parent, all I can say is my child is happy once again, and love that the class sizes are small!
Suggestion - anyway of improving our "green" ways and having all newsletters, forms, information etc sent home via email rather than paper? I just imagine all those poor trees! And for split families, I'm sure it would be more efficient to ensure the same information is being relayed to both parents from the school and the forms not being forgotten/lost at one of the parents houses and not being shared.
Good points Michelle. We are trying to get email lists for parents in all of our schools and provide each parent with the option of paper or electronic versions of newsletters and other correspondence. This is particularly important in secondary schools where the backpack express is less reliable, but as you've said, there are other reasons to use email, including being as green as possible.
I would love it if every documentation is available via the internet or email, for green reasons and practical reasons.
Our school already enables us to opt in for the hard copy (paper copy) of the PAC newsletter. It would be wonderful if the school newsletter would have that same option.
SD63s use of Moodle for the school websites would be great for doing this. For instance, the general announcements column could have a link to the new newsletter for easy access, along with a direct link to the latest newsletter in the column on the right.
Individual classroom notifications could go in the teachers column on the left.
It does seem that schools are still learning to work with Moodle.
A sidenote: Brentwood Elementary's teacher list is, as of yet, not updated to reflect the changes in teaching staff. I am sure that this is mostly due to the large volume of work in the first month of school. However, if the school websites were to be used more intensively in the years to come, having the websites up-to-date would increase the use of websites by parents. At this time the credibility of the websites would be undermined by the outdated content on the front page. If parents can trust that the websites reflect the most current information, they'd be more prepared to use it as their primary source of information about the school and the district.
That leaves me with the question - is there a single person in each school who is responsible for updating the websites? Or is it someone from the district who is updating the websites of all schools within the district?
(I'm guessing updating is the responsibility of each school individually. Having looked at the Bayside website, it is updated AND using its space for newsletters, updates and announcements. Using the Bayside website would be much more convenient for parents and guardians to access information and such than it would be for the Brentwood website.)
Brentwood has updated their website! :D
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