While the search for a permanent replacement for Angelina Pilon as School District of Mystery Lake assistant superintendent of educational services continues, Lorie Henderson has been appointed to the position on an interim basis.
Henderson had been the principal at Westwood Elementary School, a role that while Henderson is working out of the district office will be filled by Elaine Thompson, who had been vice-principal. Both appointments are effective through the end of the current school year, with an eye on finding a permanent new assistant superintendent to start Aug. 1.
"We welcome Lorie to her new role and appreciate her willingness to take on a new challenge at this time in the school year," said superintendent Beverly Hammond. "Lorie brings a breadth and depth of experience and knowledge to our senior leadership team in the areas of teaching and learning, special education, and leadership."
Pilon resigned effective Dec. 14, after only a few months on the job. On Oct. 30, she filed a 15-page, largely single-spaced complaint against Hammond containing allegations, which a school board committee later found to be false and were ultimately retracted by Pilon when she agreed to resign.
In other news coming out of the school board's Feb. 8 meeting, Hammond noted that the board's organizational review would be launched at the end of the month, with consultants from Meyers Norris Penny present at the Feb. 22 board meeting to inform trustees of the size, scope, and details of how the review would be carried out, followed by trustee interviews the next day and a presentation to staff the day after.
"In a nutshell, it is to determine our current as-is state so that in order to get to a preferred future state, we need to know where we are in order to know where it is we want to go, and then strategize about how we get from here to there," said Hammond. "It's about getting better together, celebrating and acknowledging our current successes, and planning together about strategies for continuous quality improvement of our learning system for our staff and students.'
Much like the city, the school board is also pushing ahead with a website relaunch. "We are hoping that we will relaunch over March Break," noted Hammond. "We are currently in the process of gathering the website content - that is probably the most labour-intensive. We've put out a request to all aspects of our school district, and we are relying on people to develop and prepare their content to go into our IT department relative to the things that we want our public to know."
"An effective website is never static," she added, noting that content will be updated over time. "It's always in flux, and we change and update as we need to."
Meanwhile, Juniper Elementary School has received $4,500 for a healthy snack program. "It's been up and running three times a week since Jan. 17, and they've been receiving a great many positive comments from the students and staff," said Hammond.
