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LCSD defeats motion to poll parents on calendar

Bonnyville trustee Gerald Corbiere once again made a motion at the Lakeland Catholic School District (LCSD) board meeting to poll the parents about the shared transportation system and divergent calendar issue that has been plaguing both LCSD and the

Bonnyville trustee Gerald Corbiere once again made a motion at the Lakeland Catholic School District (LCSD) board meeting to poll the parents about the shared transportation system and divergent calendar issue that has been plaguing both LCSD and the Northern Lights School Division (NLSD) and once again, the motion was defeated in a recorded vote.

He had made the motion previously at a board meeting in November and board chair Mary Anne Penner had ruled it out of order. After looking into the issue, the board found the motion was not out of order after all and allowed it to be brought back to the table at the meeting on Feb. 15.

Trustees from Cold Lake and Waskatenau expressed various concerns about the effects matching calendars with NLSD would have on their district.

The largest difference in the calendars is NLSD's Family Fridays versus LCSD's early dismissal Wednesdays which are both primarily used for staff professional development and the creation of a Professional Learning Community (PLC).

LCSD superintendent Bernadette Provost expressed concern about the effects changing to match Family Fridays would have on staff attendance at professional development when other events like basketball games might call staff away.

“You are not going to have your whole complement of staff,” she said. “That is an absolutely critical component of the early dismissals.”

Penner expressed similar concerns, saying, “I'm not sure moving to comply with a Friday over an hour on Wednesday is going to work because Friday – hey, if I had a choice between coming for PD and taking a day off, I'm sorry. A lot of times, that's what happens.”

Administration is in a better position than parents to make decisions that would have such an important affect on the district's education standards, she said.

“One of the main factors that we have the calendar the way we do … has to do with the type of education that our children are receiving,” she explained. “If they are not the bottom line of what we do, than we would have a big problem … (Parents) may be the first teachers of their children, they may be involved in the education of their children – I don't take that away from them, but our staff and our administration have a far better idea of what needs to happen in the classroom to facilitate the best learning possible for our children.”

Bonnyville trustee Margaret Borders asked whether Penner was saying the current system of professional development on early dismissal Wednesdays resulted in higher achievement tests, saying, “I can tell you school-by-school, compared to our public school counterparts, our achievement tests are lower this year and if you were to go back and study the trends, you cannot say that PLC has made a difference in our achievement testing and in fact, we lag behind.”

Provost pointed out the achievement test results were impacted by a “whole number of factors” and there are “natural dips that occur and trends that occur.”

She added the problem was not the transportation agreement or the calendars but the lack of government funding for school transportation.

“We are trying to solve a problem on the backs of either early dismissal or on the backs of Family Fridays off,” she said. “That's not the problem. The problem is that government has not increased funding for transportation for the last three years.”

She added a recent significant increase in transportation funding showed government “recognized that there is a problem. They've also changed the formulas in transportation because they recognize that not only our district but many districts are having problems with the lack of funding.”

Compromise would affect more than professional development, according to Colette Zahar, Waskatenau trustee, who worried compromising on early Wednesdays versus Family Fridays may lead to other compromises that could take away from the district's ability to offer Catholic education.

“Matching our calendars means giving up certain parts of our Catholic part of the calendar,” she said. “We would be matching a spring break as opposed to an Easter break” and Christmas would also be affected.”

There was nothing in Corbiere's motion about matching Christmas and Easter.

The board also discussed affects matching calendars would have on the rest of the district that does not rely on a joint transportation agreement. Daycares and Before and After care programs would be affected, trustee Vicky Lefebvre said.

Zahar worried parents of students in the Catholic school in Waskatenau would demand they match that calendar with the public school as well.

Trustee Kelly Henderson brought up the state of the transportation agreement with NLSD, which is currently in flux following a notice of intention to dissolve it served by NLSD last month. If negotiations fail and the two districts developed separate busing systems, polling the parents on matching the calendar would be moot.

“With transportation the way it is, I think we need to focus on that first. Depending on the outcome with what happens with our transportation agreement, I think it's going to be a big indicator of where things are going to go,” she said.

“Defeating the motion and expecting to get decisions done with negotiations on another issue, I think, is not going to get us any closer to understanding the needs of our parents and our stakeholders,” Corbiere stressed.

Bonnyville trustee Carla Sobolewski agreed, adding, “I think even if we had this motion back in October or November, when it first came up, we might not have this transportation problem. That might have changed the whole outcome of that, too.”

LCSD has a Day of Collaboration scheduled for Feb. 23, a public engagement session to meet with parents and stakeholders, and Henderson said she hoped they could discuss the possibility of polling the parents there and get more feedback before proceeding.

Attempts to pass motions to poll parents on the issue have been made as far back as November 2010 when Borders first brought the issue up. Each motion has been defeated or delayed for various reasons and Borders worried about the delay.

“You keep delaying things and it just drags on,” she said. “This is something that's quick. It can be put together immediately … The sooner the better. At least it shows the public that we will listen.”

Lefebvre disagreed, saying, “If it's defeated today, what it's saying is that we're not going to go out and immediately poll our parents. That's not the intent of the delay. I believe when we do our community engagement, we will find a way of getting out to our parents and our public in regards to it.”

“If it's defeated today, we will not be allowed to deal with it again until September,” Borders said, “We can't even deal with this calendar again for the rest of this term. That's what it's saying, that's what we've not been allowed to do, it's what we weren't allowed to do last time.”

Worrying about the effects of matching calendars was premature as the poll was meant to simply gather information and find out the opinions of parents before making any decisions, Borders said.

“When you take the poll, it does not oblige you to do anything,” she said. “It's a starting point. It's just a starting point. It's saying, ‘look, what's the feeling out there? Where do we need to go from here?' ”

Sobolewski also expressed concern with the constant delay regarding the motion, saying, “Putting it on the backburner, putting it on the backburner again – it's going to come back next parliamentary session again, I can promise.”

The motion went to a recorded vote and was defeated 4-3. Borders, Sobolewski, and Corbiere voted for it with Penner, Zahar, Lefebvre, and Henderson against.

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