Maurice Cody School Council Meeting
March 3, 2016
Principal’s Report
- The second term is moving along at a rapid pace with tons of opportunities for staff and students to be successful in a variety of venues from academic to social to athletic–-typically, second term is the most productive term for students
-The parents in the community continue to be a huge support for the school as they continue to offer their time and expertise in a variety of areas – thank you!
People:
· Teachers currently on LTO’s this year that will be complete as of the last day of school in June include Ms. Stojanovic, Mr. McBain, & Ms. Kania
· Mrs. Mildenberger, grade 4, is slated to return to Maurice Cody on a volunteer basis after the March Break. Her time at Cody will slowly increase over a 10 week period. She is optimistic that she will be able to return in September for the new school year. Fortunately, we are lucky to have Mr. McBain who has been doing a fabulous job and is available until the last day of school.
· Paula Fuentes, currently on a leave of absence for the year in the UK will be applying for a third year leave of absence for 2016-2017
· Melyssa Hollister, currently on a leave of absence, will be applying for an extension to her leave for the 2016-2017 school year
· Monsieur Landry, who has been on a 4 over 5 this school year, will be returning to Cody in September
· Mary Siegner, librarian extraordinaire, has decided to retire at the end of the school year
Program:
· The school staffing committee will be meeting in the weeks following the March break to begin, believe it or not, the process for organizing Cody for the 2016-2017 school year. We will not receive our staffing until after the March break, but we will attempt to be proactive in making some decisions early on as to what has gone well this year that we would like to maintain and what we feel is up for discussion and may require change. We are ready to have an eager group of parents who will be involved in assisting with the design of the school organizational mode as part of a parent group. This group either has a mind for timetabling, numbers etc. or is keen on finding the best organizational model looking at what’s best for the whole school moving forward. It is a very valuable and interesting process as parents who have been involved in past years can attest to. Please let Laura know of your interest. We are looking for no more than 10 parents.
· Literacy, Numeracy and Safe Schools continue to be focal points of our School Improvement Plan. As such, many staff members have been, and will continue to be, going out on professional development opportunities around new literacy and numeracy curriculum updates or implementation ideas. Staff members are provided a wonderful opportunity to dialogue with other teachers across the board and then bring this newfound expertise back to Cody to be shared with all other staff.
· February was Black History/African Heritage month. There were many special programs and activities that occurred school-wide and in many classrooms. Mr. Gale and his amazing students did a phenomenal job speaking to the school community daily introducing us to many special individuals who impacted the past and continue to impact the present. Teachers were also provided with excellent resources that they were able to access and use in their classrooms. For the month of March, Cody will be celebrating Women’s History Month under the leadership of Ms. Sherman and a huge volunteer group of grade 2 and 3 students.
· During the past four years, Cody introduced Full-Day Kindergarten (FDK) into the community. Although it has come with its challenges, the teachers have done an incredible job building an effective program that has enabled our JK and SK students to thrive. Kindergarten registration began in the middle of February and carried on consistently, day after day, throughout the month and into March. I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Ms. Anthony, Ms. Matsigaris, and Ms. Everett for their tremendous work in organizing the registrations, being so welcoming to our new families and still being able to do the work they needed to do…just a phenomenal team. The kindergarten registrations have been booming and we are on target for our projected enrolment that the board has set. We have currently registered approximately 60 JK students and our projection has been set at 90. To put that into perspective, this year, we currently have 107 JK students total and yet we still have six months left for registrations to keep coming in. As a result, I have been in constant communication with the planning department, and our superintendent and trustee. They have altered our projected enrolment slightly to match the registration pattern hopefully allowing us to maintain our staffing so as not to reduce the number of kindergarten classrooms for next year…only time will tell as staffing comes out after the March Break
We have been working tirelessly with Nenad and Nadje with respect to next year and the shared space. We will continue to be as equitable as possible, utilizing all kindergarten classrooms rotating the shared rooms each year thus giving teachers an opportunity to have the classrooms unto themselves pretty much every other year.
· Maurice Cody is a closed school so we did not accept any students on optional attendance. If a student does not live in the catchment area, they are not allowed to come to the school. If a family moves out of the catchment area, they must leave and attend the school that is in their new catchment area. The only time that a student may be allowed to stay, other than extenuating circumstances, would be in their grade 6 year if they have gone through all of their time at Cody and we would like to see them graduate with their cohort.
· Provincial Report Cards #1 went home on February 9 and parent-teacher interviews, on a needs-be basis took place during that week. It was nice to see so many parents meeting with teachers and making plans for success for their child. Provincial Report Card #2 will go home at the end of June…June 29th to be exact.
Plant/Building:
· The building is in good shape. Although we are still short the hours required to do an effective job each and every day/night with this huge extra addition to the building, it goes without saying that our team of Jane, Brad, Brad, and Michael (new) are doing an outstanding job.
· The parking lot is becoming a huge issue, especially every winter where the number of parking spaces is reduced due to the snow pile up in various corners. One of the biggest challenges is the community use of the parking lot. There are many evenings and mornings when we find community cars (not necessarily parents of Cody) in the lot…could be for days. As a result, teachers are having a very difficult time finding parking and are therefore scrambling to get into the school on time and are blocking each other in. Please be respectful of the staff parking lot.