My Archives: May 2003
Monday, May 26, 2003
In an effort to ensure that the schools affected by the current "Pupil Accommodation Process" (i.e. School Closures) communicate well and have information available to them, the council has created a new "School Closures Reference Page".
Come by and get up to speed on the latest state of the process, read background reports and school submissions. Most of all, send me stuff to post to the page or feedback. This page, while hosted on the Lady Evelyn Alternative School Council Web Site, is intended for a wider audience, including both schools in our zone and other Alternative schools in Ottawa.
Posted by Richard Deadman @ 09:03 AM EST [Link]
Monday, May 12, 2003
The (Old) Ottawa East Community Association monthly meeting will be held on Tuesday May 13th at 7:15 in the Old Town Hall at 61 Main Street.
Agenda (not necessarily in order):
- Minutes from previous meeting
- Outstanding items from last meeting
- Some ideas on revitalizing Main Street
- City Councillor's report
- Alta Vista Corridor update
- Queensway widening status
- Potential Traffic Calming work for the summer
- Springhurst park cleanup
- The City's waste management proposals
- New business
As always, everybody is welcome.
For the latest news on the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor as well as the Queensway expansion study see their website.
Posted by Richard Deadman @ 09:11 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, May 6, 2003
The first staff "Options Report" was released tonight at 7:00. The most interesting pages for Lady Evelyn are 14 and 38. Arlene and I have paper copies of the report as well as a "breakdown" report for our area that I don't believe is on-line.
There are dozens and dozens of options presented, including closures, boundary changes and relocations. It really is mind-boggling how much disruption to our kids education the school board is willing to contemplate. For our area there are essentially three options:
- Close York St. in Lowertown and split the kids between Manor Park and Queen Elizabeth, both out near St. Laurent.
- Close Viscount Alexander and split the kids between Lady Evelyn and York St. This would dual-track Lady Evelyn and force the Sandy Hill Alternative kids to be relocated to a new Alternative Program at R.E. Wilson in Vanier
- Close Elgin and Centennial, re-open McNabb and cause 11 program relocations.
One thing to note is that the board is using very outdated enrollment numbers for Lady Evelyn. They predict that our enrollment will increase with option #2 to 84%, but the board already estimates that our enrollment next year will be between 85 and 90%. They do acknowledge our concern that dual-tracking an English and Alternative School has not worked well in the past and is not well supported by the board.
Arlene and I would like feedback on how we should respond to this plan. Responses by councils to the board should be submitted in June. I suspect that there will be a "zone meeting" for Trustee Lynn Graham's Zone soon; as well this will be a good topic to discuss at our last council meeting of the year on June 5th. Otherwise, please give us a call, drop me an email or post a comment to this article. This is your school -- don't be shy about having your say.
Posted by Richard Deadman @ 12:02 AM EST [Link]
Friday, May 2, 2003
The Board's ongoing "School Accommodation Process" will release its first "Proposed Student Accommodation Options" report next Monday at 7pm. This will be followed by public meetings on May 13th and 14th. While the board will accept input until October 15th, submissions before June 30th will be taken into account in preparation of the next draft.
More information can be found at the Student Accommodation: 2004 and Beyond web page. Read on for some more details summarized from the board's web page... [more]
Posted by Richard Deadman @ 08:33 AM EST [Link]