I'd like to call to order the board meeting of February 13th, 2019. Please stand for the singing of old Canada, recorded by Dean Frank Elementary.
Those
carried. We have no delegations tonight, but we do have a presentation.
I want to welcome Christine Arthway, Assistant Superintendent, who will introduce her colleagues, and we've been able to have a presentation on curriculum updates.
Through the chair, thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on redesigned curriculum.
It takes many hands to bring the curriculum to life for and with our students.
And it is the collective efforts of multiple departments working in concert together
who create powerful learning experiences for Surrey students.
The Education Services team, Kathy Puharic, Director of Priority Practices, District
Principles, Karen Alvarez, and Antonio Venderman continue to provide exceptional leadership
in charting the course every step of the way.
This evening, Kathy will be providing a brief overview of the work at K-9 and the key elements
of the graduation program.
Kathy.
Thank
you, Christy, and thank you for allowing me this opportunity to share with you work
that I am deeply passionate about and work that I'm truly excited to share with you this
evening.
Work that I'm excited to share because not only is it a demonstration of the exceptional
work that our helping teachers are doing, but it's also a demonstration of the deep commitment
of our teachers and our administrators,
their commitment not only to their professional learning,
but also to the learning of their students.
And at the heart of the work that we do
is VCs redesign curriculum.
And what you have before you
are is a simple slide that is of two graphics
that essentially encapsulate what our curriculum is all about.
And on the left, you see the core competencies.
These are the communication skills, the thinking skills,
the personal and social skills that our students must develop
in order to engage in deep and lifelong learning.
And on the right, we have what is called the KDU model.
And these are the knowledge,
the skills and the big ideas that students have to develop in all areas of all are curriculum.
So the priority practices department engages in work that helps our teachers develop understanding of this and they support them in this way.
So what follows this evening on the slides are the work that is associated with this particular piece of the curriculum.
So, here, what you have for you is the fundamental shift in terms of curriculum and what
has happened to it.
And this is how teachers, it's a demonstration of how teachers work has changed in the
classroom.
There was a time when much of the focus of the learning experiences that students had in
the classroom focused on content on what students had to know in relation to that curriculum.
and there was about 80% of our curriculum focused on that
and there's about 20% of a focus on curricular competencies
on the skills that students had to develop
that were associated with that particular curriculum.
And what we see now is that there's been a shift,
there's been a reversal in those numbers.
So now we have more times spent on curricular competencies
in the way that content is being used,
content is being used as a vehicle to help students develop those skills and processes that they need in order to
learn the curriculum that is connected with those particular subject areas.
Ensuring that students are readers and writers and that they become numerate has been and always
will be central in core to our work.
Reading, writing and numeracy foundations are central to the redesign curriculum.
And this is central to the work that priority practices does.
First and foremost, it is about these two areas here.
This year, and in years past, we have provided many, many opportunities.
And this year is no exception.
There's been a wide array of sessions that are specific to building literacy and
numeracy foundations.
Inquiry
-based learning, this is one of the approaches that is supported by the redesigned
curriculum.
And this approach to teaching and learning is central to our redesigned curriculum.
And it is about the questions that students ask.
And this is what we are trying to engage students in and placing their questions at the center
of the classroom experience and this isn't just about asking students what do you want
to learn or just about asking them to ask us a lot of questions.
This is about triggering curiosity in our students and then students going beyond this
initial curiosity so that this becomes just the norm.
this becomes what they just naturally do because we know that it's students' questions and it's not teachers' questions that lead to deeper understanding.
So that's why it is so important that we develop this in our students so that this just becomes what they naturally do.
And so regardless of discipline, this is the kind of support that we have been providing
and priority practices, whether it's in social studies, whether it's in science, whether
it's in art education, asking these questions is essential.
And this is the kind of support that we provided in terms of the sessions, but not only in terms
of sessions, but also the resources that we have provided art schools with.
And
speaking of resources, coding and robotics,
thanks to the Board's support, can be found in all corners of our school.
We have spheroes and we have azo bots and we have block cells and we have M bots and we have more bots than I can even mention.
There are so many of them in our schools.
But these have been provided to all of our schools, all of our elementary schools,
All of our secondary schools and all of our learning centers have robotics including resources in them, and it is wonderful to see the work that students are doing in this regard and our priority practices team once again, support teachers and building their awareness and understanding of how to integrate coding and robotics resources in the curriculum and meaningful and engaging ways hands
on learning again.
another very large component of our curriculum
and regardless of age and grade level hands-on curriculum
is very much a part of this new curriculum.
And again, our teachers are engaging our students
in purposeful ways and involving them in experimenting
and in tinkering and inventing and in creating.
And they're using a variety of tools in order to do this.
Also in our schools, we're seeing a transformation in terms of our libraries in the learning environment that we're trying to create there.
Ed services, corporate services, and IMS have been combining resources for two years now so that we could assist our schools in creating virtual, physical and collaborative spaces that are characteristic of a learning home.
So what we've been providing them with specifically our technology and furniture is what helps create
those kind of spaces.
So shifting now from our K9 curriculum are following some of the key changes and timelines
that the ministry has provided us with in terms of our grad program.
More specifically, 10 to 12.
And what you have before you hear is a slide that essentially demonstrates what's the same and what's different about the curriculum.
So in terms of what's the same, strong focus on our foundational skills on reading, writing, and numeracy still remains there.
The number of students that, or the number of credits that students need in order to graduate remains the same.
10 to 12 and so do letter grades and percentages on formal reports and on transcripts.
That doesn't change.
What is changing is like with our K-9 curriculum, that focus on what students must know, do,
and be able to understand that's associated with each curriculum.
The core competencies are there explicitly and the indigenous ways of knowing are also there.
In addition to that, there's been a significant shift in careers, K to 12, and Andrew Holland
and Neeter Dillon have taken the lead as far as our career education goes, and they are
moving this agenda forward.
And so a paramount to this work that Andrew and Neeter are leading is the understanding that
career education in our schools is not about students making decisions about occupations or
about what they want to do when they finish high school rather it's about helping students
acquire the knowledge and skills and confidence to adapt in a changing world when that's likely
going to take them down a path of a variety of different careers so the focus has been
on that.
So in terms of this curriculum and when all of this is happening 10 to 12 well
Well, it's already started, our grade 10 curriculum has been implemented, and I see that
there is a little bit of an error there.
Grade 10 implementation started in 2018, September of 2018, and grade 11 and 12 will start
in 1920,
so that's coming up, another aspect of our grade 10 to 12 curriculum are the graduation assessments and here we have three assessments that students must write.
There's a numeracy assessment that they write in grade 10, there's a literacy assessment that they also write in grade 10 and in grade 12,
there will also be a literacy assessment.
These assessments, unlike in previous assessments, which we're called provincial exams, are
not based on numeracy and literacy skills, they're based on the numeracy skills, but
not skills that are tied to a specific curriculum, rather, it's skills that students develop
in all areas of the curriculum.
And
again, in terms of timelines here, this is a staggered timeline that we have for
our graduation assessments as well.
Grade 10 numeracy assessment that started in January of 2018. The Grade 10 literacy assessment
will be introduced in 2019-20, or 2019-20 in January, and the Grade 12 literacy assessment
will be in January of 2021.
So as we know, and as I've already mentioned, are helping
teachers. Oops, the last slide is not there.
Something's going to
write here, but that's all right. So as we know, our helping
teachers are instrumental in supporting our classroom. Teachers
in the implementation of this new curriculum. And what was on
that slide, we're just a few examples of what we're doing at the
grade 10 to 12 level to support this implementation. But really
what I wanted to say was in the last two and a half years, we've done more than what
you would have seen on those slides.
We have been heavily engaged in supporting this curriculum.
So in the last two and a half years, we've had 497 after school sessions.
We have had 88 dinner sessions, and in addition to this, we have also had our helping teachers
providing side-by-side support in the classroom.
They've also been attending schools at lunchtime and providing lunch and learns.
In this year to date we had over, so just from September till the end of January we had
over 260 lunch and learn sessions in our schools.
They have provided side-by-side support on over 300 occasions and all of this to say that our
numbers are staggering, that we have an enormous number of committed teachers and administrators
who through the work of our helping teachers are building their understanding of what it
means to create learning environments that are concept based in competency driven.
I'm very proud of the work that we do and I'm very, very grateful to the Board for the support
that you give all of us for doing this amazing work each and every day.
So thank you.
So if I could just ask you a question.
So on the new curriculum, specifically to grade 10,
and hopefully you have some information or you know about something on it,
the previous grade 10 curriculum was very limited on personal finances and budgeting.
And this seems to be a common sort of issue that I get from a lot of parents
about a child or student in grade 10 to 12 learning about how to handle their own personal
finances. So instead of just learning about interest rates and how to calculate that, they
actually learn why they need it and they can learn for themselves how to budget, how to
sort of organize their own financial affairs. So it's in real life situations as opposed
to reading from a textbook of X-cost so-and-so but actually doing that their own personal
budgets so that when they graduate they have a real understanding of their own finances.
Do you know if that's now part of the new curriculum for them to actually learn based on their
own sort of things that they'll have to do?
And then the second one, how is the assessment done for the grade 10 and then on to the grade
12?
Is it in the form of the old kind of government exams that they did away with and now maybe
decided to bring it back?
So the financial literacy piece, that is very much what they are bringing into the new curriculum.
You see some of that, you'd see in the math classes and it would be expected that that
would be done in some of the other classes because when we say that students write a numeracy
assessment and that assessment is not tied to a particular class, so that numeracy assessment
is not a math test, that numeracy assessment would be a demonstration of the type of numeracy
skills the everyday real life kind of numeracy skills that students would be expected to have.
So that could very well, that would be the type of thing that would be on that numeracy assessment.
So that is something that schools would be moving in that direction.
Okay, thank you. Yeah, trustee, then. Sorry.
No, and just in terms of the type of assessment that it is, it is online. It is done.
There are different components to it. There's an online component that could have multiple
choice types of questions, but there would also be written answers to these questions as well.
And moving to our grade 12 literacy assessment where there would even be an oral,
So there's audio associated with it, which is very new.
We haven't had audio in any of our assessments before.
So just a question for the question online.
How can you guarantee that that's actually the person doing it?
Well, there's a company called Willux and they work very closely with the ministry and
our administrators when they go into the schools, the students are there.
you check in, you're sitting at a computer, so you're checking in, it's usually in a smaller
setting compared to a gym where there might be 300 computers, they don't do that, so it's
a classroom with 25 students.
Okay, thank you.
Trustee Finn.
I just wanted to say thank you, Kathy, Christie, Antonio, Karen, Andrew, Niro, who's not here
I believe for a wonderful job.
I know for some people it might be few slides, but I know how much work is involved behind this, creating all this.
So I just wanted to thank you guys for doing such a wonderful job.
Thank you.
Thank you all from the board.
I have a motion to approve minutes of the minutes of the last board meeting.
Second.
All in favor?
Opposed, carried.
We will now move on to the 2.18 to 2019 amended annual budget.
Thank you Madam Chair.
Madam Chair is my pleasure and a bit of the budget committee to bring forward the
2018-2019 amended annual budget for the Board's consideration and approval.
The amended budget has been prepared to reflect actual enrollment as funded by the Minister
of education, as well as an updated projections for all the sources of revenue expenses for
the year-ended June 30, 2019.
Madam Chair, a careful review of the amended budget will reveal the district will finish
the year in a strong financial position, despite its operating expenses exceeding revenues
by $2 million. The next shortfall in revenues will be offset by existing
priors operating fund balance, which will be drawn down to $12.8 million at June 30. Note
the operating fund balance includes $7.2 million for contributions required by
government towards new capital projects.
High lives include consolidated revenues for the year are projected at $789 million.
Total operating revenues projected at $692.7 million, an increase of $10.3 million over
the preliminary budget.
The total fund of school aid enrollment is projected at almost 73,400 FTEs, an increase
of 1,200 students over the previous year.
Total operating expenses projected to be 694.7
million, an increase of 4.2 million, or the preliminary budget due primarily to increase
supply and service costs of 4.5 million. Salary increases of 1.1 million. Additional operates
in funding for educational initiatives, facilities and technology of 2.4 million. These costs
increased our offset by benefit decrease of 3.8 million, mainly due to the reduction in
teachers' pension plan contribution rates.
Madam Chair, in closing, in summary,
I'm pleased to report that the board's
sound-proved fiscal management policies and practices
have enabled the district to continue to put students'
needs first.
Despite continuing funding and cost pressures,
the district remains in a very strong financial position.
The strong financial position will assist the district
As we plan and develop a budget for the 2019-2000 fiscal year, Madam Chair, thank you.
And if I may, I would like to thank Secretary Treasurer and Simon Ayers for both their teams
for all the work and support that they give this board in reaching these numbers.
And as you can see, we finish this one, now we start the next one.
And so it goes, right, and, you know, so the pressures on staff, certainly, and the pressures
on the board never seem to end, because it's our job by law to always provide a balanced
budget, so Madam Chair, I guess I would move that we accept,
approve the budget.
Are
you saying number one in the recommendation is what you're saying Kerry that the attached
school just to fill in the budget yes okay all in favor opposed Kerry yeah
three
readings please move first second first could I have the three readings first okay I'm
motion to have.
I'll move that we give the annual budget by-law three readings
of this meeting.
Second.
All in favour?
Opposed?
Carry.
No, I move first, reading.
And I will second, first.
All in favour?
Opposed?
Carry.
Second.
Madam Chair.
Second.
All in favour?
Opposed?
Carry.
Move third.
Second.
Opposed?
All in favour?
Opposed?
Carry.
We will now move on to the sketch panel, sorry, Trustee McNally.
If you all indulge me, Madam Chair, we've just approved an amended operating budget for
the current year and as the chair, the budget chair has indicated we're in the process
of developing our preliminary budget for this next year.
And one of the significant cost drivers for the district is our continued enrollment growth
in our lack of school capacity to accommodate this growth.
Our preliminary analysis indicate that we are going to need to place at least 25 additional portables next year.
As well as move, probably another 10 portables within the district.
And the cost of acquiring, placing, and outfitting portables is approximately $210,000 per portable.
and the cost of simply moving a portable in the district is approximately $75,000 per portable.
With the addition of 25 new portables, we anticipate our total portable count to increase
to 358 portables with an annual operating cost of approximately $13,250 for each one.
And it's my understanding that preliminary cost estimates of acquiring the new portables
as well as moving and the operating annual operating costs for these portables is going
to total over $10.7 million for this district.
And the majority of these portables and their related costs are the direct result of insufficient
school capacity.
So, with this in mind, I would like to move that the Board of Education write a letter
to the Minister of Education, copied to all local MLA's, requesting the Ministry of
Education recognize the significant cost being incurred by our district relating to acquiring
and operating portables estimated at $10.7 million for the 2019-20 year, and that the Ministry
provide a special purpose grant to our district to help fund portable costs for the 2019-2020
year and that the ministry work with our secretary treasurer to determine the final actual
costs to be funded and if I have a second or a couple of other comments I would like
to make.
I spent two days at BCSCA this past week, where we talked about the new funding formula
and every minute of every hour I heard about funding protection for declining districts
and nobody, not even the ministry staff, gave any lip service to the cost incurred by growing
districts.
I feel strongly we need to get this letter sent before we meet with our local
LA's in a couple of weeks. And this money, all of this money, this 10.7 million or whatever
it ends up to be, this is money that should be spent on our students in their classrooms.
So I hope you will support this motion. Trustee Holmes?
Yeah, I strongly support this motion.
Something we've brought up many times for the ministry.
I think three or four years ago, we actually got some funding one year and one year only
never again since then.
It was brought up again by a number of us at our recent summit meeting with the ministry,
without a whole lot of positive answer at that point in time, of course, but I definitely
support us bringing a formal letter to make this a request.
Appreciate it as well.
Trustee McNally.
Thank you.
I don't see you, Terry. Trustee Allen?
No,
I mean, this discussion around the cost of portables
came up as we started to prepare our 2019-2020 budget. And Trustee McNally is absolutely right.
This comes away from what should be spent on children. There's no question about that.
And
isn't the first time we've been to the well and come up dry.
But the truth of the matter is, Trustee McNally's opening comments are correct.
The smaller districts constantly pound away at ministry and their local MLA's for relief
for declining enrollment, constantly, not just occasionally, or once a year like we do about
the cost of portables, they're constantly.
When ever they get together, it's what about us, what about us, what about us.
And yet in all the years I've sat here, and certainly the same with Trustee McNally,
there's been never been any recognition for growing districts, certainly growing district
the size of Surrey.
When you've just heard the final budget figures, last year alone we had 1200 new students,
right?
I mean, that's the size of some districts, right?
I mean, when you think about it, how ridiculous it really is.
And yet, ministry turned a blind eye to the fact
that our Secretary of Treasury and Deputy Secretary of Treasury
have to find that funding from somewhere just to put kids
in classrooms. We're not talking about anything fancy.
We're talking about putting children into classrooms.
And I think that the more that we continue to do it, and I urge, and obviously, it'll
be passed unanimous, and why wouldn't it?
But I mean, I think the public needs to know that that's $10 million that could be spent
on their children.
No, there's no messing about with it, there's not no way of being fancy about it, that's
where it comes.
I'm the Budget Chair, this is my Budget Committee, and we know exactly to the penny where it
comes from.
So, I think that somehow, some way, we have to wake up the local NLA.
I mean, that's who goes to the Ministry of Education and says, oh, by the way,
silly children are being ripped off for $10 million, because, in my words, that's exactly
what it is.
So, thank you, Trustee McNally and thank you, Madam Chair.
I see no further speakers, all in favor?
Opposed, carried.
I would also like to take this time to acknowledge Trustee Allen for his ongoing work with the budget.
He's been budget chair for quite a few years, and he does an exceptional job on our behalf of the board, so thank you, Mr. Allen.
We will now move on to sketch plans of Sullivan Heights, secondary.
Thank you chairperson, we're very pleased to be bringing forward the sketch plans for
the expansion of Sullivan secondary school and I would very much like to welcome and introduce Mr.
Dave Riley our new director of the capital project office, welcome Dave and Dave will introduce our presenters tonight.
is the architect
and partner in the space architecture planning and interior design.
He is specialized in new school projects, and in addition to the Sullivan Heights Secondary
present today, he is also the architect on our as we drive elementary, dog road elementary,
and Douglass Area Elementary, sorry.
Thank you, Lee.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Trustees, for the opportunity to present
the Sullivan Heights edition.
I did have it written down and I decided I'm going to wing it
because I've changed the arrangement a little bit.
The slide you have in front of you basically explains the context of this project.
The existing Sullivan Heights secondary school.
Sorry.
Existing Sullivanite secondary school is a capacity of 1,000 students and the new addition would add another 700 students to that there are several site restrictions on this on the existing site, including the existing play field to the south creek to the east and portables and parking restrictions that we're dealing with in this design.
and so I'll get into that in some detail here.
In phase, the project will be in two phases.
The first phase will include relocation
of the existing portables that currently reside adjacent
just north of the existing play fields.
And the existing driveway entrance will also be relocated
to the north.
And we have a difference in grade between the existing main
floor level of the Sullivan School with the play field about six meters.
So, these several restrictions including the stream to the east, which is, we need to set back about 30 meters.
I'll go through the plans briefly.
This is the lower floor.
The lower floor consists of a multipurpose room that has flexibility for up to about 150 people.
There's a main entrance corridor lobby, which is a elevator lobby, a maker space, which
is that ultimate point to it on the plan here.
The maker space, which is this space here adjacent to the lobby, a student gallery space,
a junior shop, or a tech lab we like to call it, and a computer lab, and all these spaces
are basically adjoined and can be used simultaneously amongst these three shops.
service spaces including change rooms, mechanical spaces are located against the retaining portion of this project and again that's a six meter difference in height so these spaces are high spaces.
The floor above consists of one learning neighborhood in learning neighborhood that has a shared project space in the middle and four classrooms that surround including two prep spaces.
to the south, which is the green floor plate area located on the, shown on this plan, is
the foods and above is the science. And this science foods area is linked to the existing
school on the second level. So you could imagine this space as being the through space or
for many of the students for the shared component and won't allow students to enter these learning
neighborhoods to the west for private reasons of not mixing too many of the students amongst
different learning neighborhoods. The floors above are basically a repeat. So this is a
very compact plan, a stacked plan, it's very efficient on this level because we have
a roof level above that link. We are envisioning an outdoor learning area and I do have some
renderings that you'll see shortly. And again, that's the top floor level four. The gymnasium
is an addition to the existing gymnasium along the east side of Sullivan. This plan doesn't
show it quite as well as I'd like, but you'll see it rendering it shortly. So here's an image of
the proposed addition, which is located to the south of the existing school. And you'll see the
four-story addition as well as the addition of the gymnasium adjacent to the existing gymnasium.
The project is envisioned as being of punched openings, efficient cladding systems,
lots of glazing to provide day lighting and views to the interior.
here. The science component which is this dark, darkened mass in the front is what we've
used architecturally to provide some type of break between the existing school and the
new addition as well as a covered area directly above the multipurpose space which is underneath.
And then as you can see behind this tree which is placed right in the middle of the camera
There's a lobby area for the students.
The shops are on the right.
All the materials are hardened along the lower floor
with security shutters, the upper floor, lots of glass.
Here's another image of the front of the addition,
which provides seating and a student plaza space
that's covered, partially covered, again,
more shops with overhead doors, openers
and all the classrooms.
terms. The south side, again deals with sun and solar gain, so we have sun shades along
all the windows, as well as a stair that you'll see shortly here, which is interconnects all
the floors of the addition, and it's a means of the students getting from their floor down
to the shared components on the lower floor. And then you'll see the stair there. Excuse
Excuse me.
You'll see the stair there.
Also included is a small covered student area next to the, this is part of the link.
So this area could be shared with the existing high school portions, grade 11 and 12, and
10 11 and 12, and also the grade 8 and 9, which is what this edition is for, would also use
this space.
And this is what links the existing school through to the addition.
The existing drop in grade along the South portion of the existing school, and we were
envisioning turning this into a student plaza space, which also provides retaining for
that six meter drop.
So this would be a nice social space, links to the new gym with transparency through, new basketball
all court and possibly performance spaces and that's what I have there.
Any questions?
So seeing none and thank you so much. I'd like to have a motion to receive.
Okay, see no speakers, all in favour? Opposed? Carried. And thank you once again.
We will now move on to by-law number 220, Douglas area elementary.
Thank you, Chairperson.
And we do have a series of by-laws that we need to go through.
The first is by-law 280 for Douglas Elementary School.
This is a restrictive covenant in favor of the city of Surrey, and
it's required for water quality and sediment control in terms of the overall hard services of the site.
In order to move forward with this restrictive covenant the board is required to approve
by law number 280 we have included in your package a draft perform of the bylaw as well
as a bit of a visual showing where the area restricted area will be and there is also a series
of recommendations on page 59 of your reports.
Mr. Frank could I before we start could I ask you on the picture what actually is that like
Does it impede the use of that land?
Like is it above grade or level was grade or?
I believe it's a catch area, perhaps either.
It's like a catch, isn't it?
Yeah, other Kellier Dave could speak to that.
So yeah, these water quality,
it's an underground concrete box basically
that captures all of the runoff from the parking lots
So that it can separate the oil and the grease from the clear water, so that none of that gets into the city's storm sewer system.
So is it grade level then? So it's underground.
Okay.
So there is a clean out at grade level, so that our staff can get in there and maintain them.
But it is an underground concrete box.
All right, thank you.
Move the viola to any of the given three readings.
Second.
All in favor.
Opposed carries.
Move first, reading.
Second, first.
All in favor.
Opposed carried.
Move second.
Second, second.
All in favor.
Opposed carried.
Move third and final.
Second.
All in favor.
Opposed carried.
We will now move on to viola 281 Douglas Elementary.
Thank you Chairperson.
And this restrictive covenant, again, is required by the city of Surrey in order for us to go forward with this project.
The restrictive covenant will be in favor of the city, and it is there and requires the district to construct, install and maintain storm, storm drainage system, as well as sustainable drainage measures.
In order to move forward, by law number 281 is required for approval, and we've included a pro forma of the by law as well as a drawing and a series of recommendations on pages.
62 of your package.
Thank you.
So I moved that by the 2.81 regarding Douglas area elementary site 180, the stick to governance
sustainable drainage be given 3 rating.
Second.
All in favour?
Opposed?
Carried.
I would move first.
Rating.
Second first.
All in favour?
Opposed?
Carried.
Move second.
Second.
All in favour?
Opposed?
Carried.
Move third and final.
Second.
All in favour?
a poll is carried. We will now move on to, excuse me, bylaw 282, Regent Road.
Thank you Chairperson. This is another restrictive, actually this is a dedication of existing
lands and it's required again by the city of Surrey and the dedication will be land
that will be used for biodiversity.
A corridor on the one side of the property. It is in favor of the city, and again, in order to move forward, by-law number 282 is required to be approved. And again, we've included a pro forma drawings of the location of the area as well as a series of recommendations on page 65 and 66 of your package. So I move that by-law 280 be regarding regional road elementary site, 280, dedication, BCS corridor, be given three readings.
Second. All in favour? Opposed, carried. Move first. Second. All in favour? Opposed, carried.
Second, second. All in favour? Opposed, carried. Move final. Second. All in favour? Opposed, carried.
We will now move on to bylaw 283, Regent Royal Elementary as well.
Thank you Chairperson, this by-law is also for a dedication of board lands.
It's a road dedication in favor of the city of Surrey.
And then again in order to move forward with subdivision and road dedication, the board
is required to approve by-law number 283.
And again we have a draft pro-former, the by-law attached, as well as a set of drawings
and recommendations for the board's consideration on page 69 of your package.
First.
Chad L.
So moved by-law, 283, we're given three readings.
There second.
Allen Feather, posed Kerri.
So moved first.
Second.
Allen Feather, posed Kerri.
Move second.
Second.
Allen Feather, posed Kerri.
Move third and final.
Second.
Allen Feather, posed Kerri.
We will now move on to by-law 284, продarbrod necessary.
The person you'd be happy to know this is the last by-law.
It does relate to Madagro Elementary.
Again, the City of Surrey is requiring a dedication of board of lands along an
earth property line of the property and similar to one of the previous by-laws in
dedication.
It's also for biodiversity conservation corridor.
Again, in order to move forward with the dedication, the boards require to prove by-law number 284.
We've included the pro forma as well as a set of drawings and the recommendations this time are on page 72 of your package
Thank you move the by-law to a for-be-given three readings second all in favor
Post carry move first second first all in favor
Posed carry move second
Second all in favor
Posed carried move third and final
Second all in favor
Posed carry
All right.
Thank you, Chair.
Done for the by-laws today.
Now onto the 2020-2021 International Student Fees.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
As the board knows, you are on an annual basis, approve tuition fees for international students
and you do it up to 18 months in advance.
So most important, this is for the 2020-21 school year.
I want to thank Assistant Superintendents Andrew Holland and Neter Dillon and Manager Angela
Olsen.
The only other comment I would make about these, the change, or sorry, the non-change to
the fees, is that we're working carefully as well with the department around really
the relationships with China and the impact on our international student enrollment, but
we want to keep the fees exactly where they are for now.
Any questions?
Seeing none, all in favor, opposed, carried.
We will now, I will now turn the chair over to Trustee Holmes to report on the policy committee.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Policy committee is a very good committee to go through all the policies one by one through the years and
have a look at where we need to tighten up some policies, make some changes.
In this case, it's two fairly minor changes that we brought forward to a public board meeting a couple of months previous.
Policy 2,400 school board meetings and trustee and service sessions, some minor housekeeping wording clarifications.
and policy 10900, anti-discrimination human rights, just some other housekeeping to align our policy with BC Human Rights Code.
So I'd like to move that we approve the recommended revised policies, policy 2,400, and policy 10900.
Any questions?
All in favor?
A poll is carried.
Thank you, Trustee Holmes.
I'll now read out the board report.
As Chairperson, I very pleased to report that the Board of Education has been extremely
busy since our last report on January 9th.
And specific activities I would like to highlight include BCPC annual general meeting.
On January 23rd and 24th, the Board was represented at the annual general meeting of the BC Public
School Employees Association.
This 2-day AGM focused on governance issues and preparation for the 2-19 collective
bargaining.
BCSTA and BCPC trustee orientation.
On January 25th and 26th, the board was represented at the BCSTA BCPC trustee orientation
meetings.
These meetings held over two days were focused on board work, broad work of a board of education
and its trustees.
City of Surrey Liaison meeting. On January 31st, the board and senior staff met with the
mayor of Surrey, city councillors, and their senior staff. The meeting was an introduction
to the new mayor and council and was primarily focused on capital and our urgent need for more
student school capacity to be built throughout the district. The discussion topics included
strengthening our joint planning, expediting capital project delivery, as well as other topics
such as joint use agreements for shared use of facilities.
Opposition education critic.
On January 31st, the board and senior staff met with the official opposition education
critic who introduced himself to the board and engaged in a discussion of priority issues
for the board.
Issues discussed included the extreme shortage of student capacity in our schools, concerns
regarding the potential outcome of the Ministry's ongoing review of the operating grant formula
and the inadequacy of the existing community link funding.
Meeting with D-PAC on February 6th, the board hosted a meeting with the Surrey District
Parents Advisory Council.
The liaison meeting was an introduction to the new D-PAC Council and was an opportunity
to provide updates on various topics as well as discuss how the district can further support
the work of D-PAC.
Meeting with the Minister of Education, City of Surrey Mayor and Council.
On February 7th, the Board met with the Minister of Education and the City of Surrey-Marin Council,
the meeting focused solely on how three levels of government can work together to deliver
more new schools and school expansion projects in a faster, efficient, and more coordinated
manner.
Official groundbreaking.
Also on February 7th, the Board hosted an official groundbreaking ceremony for the new
Edgewood Area Elementary School.
Construction has now started on the new elementary school,
which will have a 655 student capacity
and serve the Grandview Heights area.
The Edgewood Elementary School is the third project.
Construction contract awarded over the last two months.
The other two projects include a 12 classroom addition
at Pacific Heights Elementary School,
as well as the new Badaw Road Elementary School,
which once completed will have a capacity for 605 students in the Clayton area.
All three of these projects are now under construction.
And thank you to those of you who are in the audience and who attended that freezing
freezing day.
We couldn't even get the shovels in the ground.
City of White Rock liaison meeting.
Earlier today the board met with the City of White Rock Maron Council.
The meeting was a first introduction to the new council and focused primarily on a sharing
of information and discussing capital project priorities for the White Rock area.
upcoming meetings and events.
Next week I will represent the board at the annual board chairs and partner group liaison
meetings with the Ministry of Education and I will provide an update in the next report.
On March 1st, trustees will meet with local MLAs to discuss various topics including
capital projects and funding.
On behalf of the board, I would also like to recognize two events that will be taking place within the district this month.
On February 21st, the district will be recognizing international mother language data to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and promote multiculturalism.
And the committee actually did a report to the board I think in November.
On February 27th, various events will take place throughout the district to take a stand against bullying on pink shirt day.
Trustees are proud to support the work undertaken by staff and students to highlight these important initiatives.
So if you have your pink shirt, please wear them.
I will now move to the Progress Report Act of Capital projects.
Next.
Thank you, Chippers, and staff are bringing forward the regular report on capital projects
and I would like to ask Mr. Dave Riley, our Director of Capital Projects Office, to perhaps
provide some highlights of the report.
Thank you.
I'm pleased to provide a couple of highlights of some of the active projects.
So since the last meeting in January, we've tendered and awarded the new elementary school
at Site 206, Edgewood Drive, to DCS Construction,
and we were pleased to attend the groundbreaking ceremony there,
even though it was quite cold.
In addition to that, we have two tenders for new schools out
on the street right now.
We have Site 117, Grandview Heights Secondary School.
The tenders are closing on March 14th,
and we have Site 180, Douglas Area Elementary School,
Tenders Closing on March 21st.
Additionally to that we have sub-trade tenders for MJ Shannon seismic project and Sullivan
Elementary Edition will be closing later in March.
These are construction management and the construction management contract has already been awarded.
We have draft PDRs completed for two of the four seismic upgrades, Holly and Greenaway.
These are being submitted for ministry review this week.
At present, we have 3,865 new seats in construction or being tendered, and we have an additional
1,805 seats currently in design.
In addition to that, we have a number of projects in various stages of planning.
We are looking forward to receiving a new support letter from the Ministry of Education in March
to get started on some more additional projects,
which we had previously put forward
as part of the five-year capital plan.
The details of all of the projects are in your handout
and we'd be happy to answer any specific questions.
Move to receive a broader support.
Thank you.
All in favor, posed, carried.
Now, we'll have social and emotional learning presentation.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
This is a continuation, just to make sure my clicker works here, of a report we did last month if members in the audience were here and as a board will recall we did a presentation on things like completion rate and graduation rate and looked at some of our achievement evidence in the district and now we wanted to do part two, so last meeting at the end of the meeting, these were the closing thoughts we had, we talked about how strong and innovative district we are with high levels of success.
And that we wanted to continue examining how we're communicating our success to the public.
And we said that next meeting we talk about social, emotional learning and
the health of our schools and communities, so here we are.
So I want to start this and much of the presentation today is based on a new tool we are using,
which is called the Middle Years Development Instrument.
And the way in which we display that data is through a piece of software called Power BI for
business intelligence, that's for Microsoft, the middle years development instrument is really
out of the human learning partnership, which is at UBC and also a partnership with the United
Way. So what is what we call the MDI? First and foremost it is a self-reporting questionnaire
for children in grade four and it's about not just their experience in the schools but it's about
their experience in the community and that's a really important piece for this tool because we don't
We don't have any other things that we look at that really talk about what is a student's experience beyond school.
It is not about individual children, and we're looking at it to promote social emotional health and
well-being.
We absolutely are looking at it to inform policy and practice, and I'll talk a little bit more about that.
But it is also a strength-based approach, and you'll see that through the examples I show you.
So, there are five dimensions of the MDI, they look at social and emotional development, physical health and
well-being, connectedness both in the school and in the community, use of after school time, and
students' actual school experiences.
So, I'm going to go through them one by one just so that you see how those are broken down.
So, social and emotional development, first of the five, they ask students question on these categories
and I won't read them all out to you.
But you notice when they talk about absence of sadness
and absence of worries, that's different than saying
to students, are you sad and do you worry?
That's just the nuances in a strength-based approach
rather than the opposite.
Physical health and well-being is about things
like breakfast, do you have meals with adults at home?
Do you get to bed?
How many hours of sleep do you get?
And things like your body and image in general health.
Connectedness, adults at school, adults in your neighborhood, at home as well, pure belonging, do you have friendship in the school, and do you have important adults that you connect with, again, in the school and in the community?
It also looks at the use of after-school time when students leave school and go into the evening, where do they go, and it looks to both really arrange organized activities that you see there, including the places that they go,
and things that they wish to do.
And next, they talk about school experiences. Your academic self-concept. Like, do you think you're a good learner and a strong learner? The climate in your school? Do you feel like you belong? Are you motivated? Do you have future goals? And are you a victim of bullying, both cyber bullying or social bullying or physical? I show this slide because you heard Kathy Puharic and Karen Elver as Antonio Venderman and Christine Northway early
talking about core competencies, and the MDI is a way, one way in which we can look at,
to what extent do we believe students are acquiring the core competencies?
Because what we wouldn't want is to have a multiple choice test around, do you have friends?
Or are you a critical thinker, and that would be a whole separate debate in itself.
But you see on the left side, the example of MDI questions and the measures, and
And this is the link to the actual curriculum around personal and social competencies and
positive personal and cultural identity, awareness responsibility and social responsibility.
Excuse me.
So, and I want to say, especially people in the audience, please take everything I say with a grain of salt, because I don't want people thinking,
oh gee, these are happy schools and these are unhappy schools, so I shall explain, but I want to show you what it looks like.
So, these are all the elementary school catchments in the district, and if you look at which students report to be happy, and which students report to be less happy, then the red in all of these maps indicates schools that you would say are more at risk, and then the bright teal colors would indicate schools that are least at risk, and you can see the in between.
The grade that you see are schools that did not participate in the MDI.
So we were able to do this, all of the measures that you saw, these five domains around the MDI,
we could map them all against every catchment in the district to try and figure out what's
again, what students in grade four are self-reporting.
The same thing, we can talk about sadness, who is reporting higher levels of sadness than
other areas, and the reason I show these is really to show when you put them side-by-side
that we see different things for different data that we have.
And I want to say that when I put these side-by-side, students in these schools are reporting
these things to us.
We don't really know whether it's true or not, it's a student report, it's a survey.
We don't know exactly what the context, it's one piece of evidence, and we've done this once.
So what I'm trying to show you, oops, is the capabilities we have, and which leads us to then big questions.
As opposed to saying, okay, well, let's go intervene there because these students are indicating they're more sad than these students.
As well, if I was going to go into crazy detail about this, you'd have to look at the range of all of these reports.
Is it like zero to 100% or is it 48% to 52% right that could be a very narrow ban?
So again, the reason I'm doing this presentation today is more to show the public and the board the capabilities we have and some of the tools that we're starting to get at.
So I want to show you some other examples examples of what we see after school.
So in this data that I'm going to show you, it's really important to know that it's listed by family,
but it's collected in the elementary school.
So for example, when I show you the data,
if I say, well, this is in Tamanos,
it's the Tamanos family of schools
and it's the grade fours in the Tamanos family of schools.
It's just the way we report on the data.
And Tamanos, for example, is these schools
that you see listed there.
And so the family piece concept is super important
because this is what it looks like.
So I picked a few to show.
So on the top, very top, you see the title, this is Connectedness with peers and
adults at school, and in the neighborhood, and at home.
And this particular graph, I've sorted it by who rarely has dinner with adults.
And some of the things that leap out, so the district average 18% of our students in our district say they rarely have dinner with adults.
That's a lot of kids, we have 44,000, 43,000 elementary students.
So you see on the bottom, these are sorted by the green bar.
So when it says Ender Creek LA Matheson from the bottom left.
Guilford Park, Quantlin, Frankert, Lord Tweed's Mayor, the other thing is when we look at these measures,
they really don't sort the way we would typically indicate OG, this is a more vulnerable school than that school.
You see a huge range.
So again, I've sorted this just by the, I don't want to show my ignorance of colors.
Don't know whether they call that teal or light green, but you see the 27, the green bars going from the students who are least having dinner with adults, and down, and you see the schools below, and those are percentile, so 27, 25.
So what about who goes to sleep, and at what time, so who goes to sleep after midnight?
So, these are the schools where the students are going to bed after midnight,
and that is 20% of the grade fours and above.
So, it's just surprising, these grade fours, and I'm not making any judgment.
I'm just, wow, okay, that's more students than I thought.
We're going to bed after midnight, and you see the schools listed below.
And then on the right hand side, who is getting the most sleep?
And you see a whole different range of schools.
So, again, these are just things we look at and we haven't even begun asking questions around what do we do about that?
When do we go and have conversations with the community or with the school around? Did you know or do you see it in your classroom?
I'm thinking for teachers knowing that one fifth of all your students went to bed after midnight might be information that would be helpful or not.
We would have to get in conversations.
What do you do after school?
So, this is what students say, and you see things which you can make your own interpretation
on.
What I was surprised at here is basically where do you go after school?
Everybody goes home, 89.36%.
But only 42% of students never go to a friend's house, and I guess just stating myself right after
school, you kind of went to your friend's house, and now almost half of our kids are saying
they never go to a friend's house after school, which, I don't know, it surprised me.
Malls and stores, a quarter of our students going to the mall or store, 25% a time, two times or more after week.
What types of activities do you do after school?
You see on going from left to right, 76% of our students are saying they're highly involved in organized activities, but what are those activities we don't know?
You see 55% of our students in grade four saying that they've never participated in music or art.
So, again, if you want to start to influence policy, you can start asking questions.
Do you think music and art are valuable?
Because half of your students in grade four are not participating in that after school.
Things like team sports or individual sports and I won't read the data out to you there.
But you see that that's just another area that you can look at and
ranges of students who aren't participating in either one.
So I say, so what does all that mean?
And these are, but a few of a huge range of indicators and we're having increasingly
complex conversations about the health of a school.
Here we are talking about how would you, what would you say is a healthy school?
What would you look at to determine that?
Because it's just a personal thing for me, we tend to have these vulnerability indexes and
And I'm not sure the vulnerability index is actually line up with the health of a school.
We would look at things like do two students go to school?
Is attendance an indicator of the health of a building?
Teachers.
Are teachers feeling good about their building?
Are teachers getting sick more often?
Are we having struggling to get TOCs in particular buildings?
All of those things come to mind.
So we're trying to understand how to interpret the data.
I want to say again, we're not drawing any particular conclusions.
And we're just asking how our programs are having an impact and I want to give a specific example.
So we have a large department of community and school partnership.
What they do is they run programs, they run after school programs around all sorts of supports for our schools.
And our questions around that now when we look at this data is all of those programs that they run have an explicit purpose.
We just don't know that if we have an after school program that let's say is intended to give kids a connection with a significant adult after school.
Where should that program go, because we don't have one in every school, and right now we typically use this vulnerability index to place those programs, and now we're asking, well, is that the right place?
And when we see things like schools with in high level of socioeconomic status having high levels of anxiety, high levels of sadness, high levels of worry.
Like comparable to some of our schools that we would call vulnerable.
Well, we don't know whether that's because all the programs we have in our less affluent area of the district are actually working.
Or are we just over-representing the anxiety in some of our other schools?
So other thoughts, I put on here, social and emotional learning as the board knows and other people know that's central to our district vision and so we just consistently need to ask ourselves to what extent are we achieving that vision?
We're trying to use more sophisticated tools to ask those questions and ultimately I'm hoping that we can come to some understanding around how that can influence policy.
But I also want to say, I think this is really leading edge work because looking at
evidence that you see around things like sleep and connection with adults.
Not many districts are doing this or it's difficult to do.
I think it's really important that we do it and that we do it carefully.
This isn't about ranking schools or calling a school good or bad or one better than the other.
This is about what do we know about our buildings and
And how can we place our resources to the most support in the buildings that need it the most?
So that's it, and thank you very much Madam Chair.
My sir questions.
Is there any intent, Superintendent Tinney, to increase this to maybe a higher grade?
Because I was really amazed at the after 12 bed time for grade fours.
I would hesitate to think what it would be for grade nine, so great.
like it mases me that that's a grade 4 level and you would assume that if
there's siblings maybe that's even worse you know when you think of maybe
those could be grade 2's and 3's if the grade 4's allowed to stay up that late
I mean it's this sounding and the same as not having meals with parents that was
sort of eye opening when we first read this so is there any opportunity to
Do you expound or are you just going to try and deal with this data first?
Well, I think as with anything, what I'm discovering,
anything on the evidence side is you have to decide how far you want to go.
And there is a version that is a mill years development instrument that does, I believe, grade seven.
But I think that right now our focus Madam Chair would be to come to try to come to understand this.
And if we believe sleep is an issue and we want to address it, then how would we address it as a board?
rather than seek out necessarily more data because I just think there's so much
to gather here but it would absolutely have implications for later grades so
we might do pick a explicit thing like sleep and if we land it on it we might say to
your question rather than a whole new instrument just for that specific topic what
are we doing in that particular grade. Thank you.
So move to future business the next
future meetings are listed there. We have a motion to adjourn.
Second.
All in favor?
Opposed?
Carried?