The School District of Mystery Lake (SDML) board of trustees held their final meeting of the school year June 16, discussing topics including staffing and the expected reopening of schools to in-class learning in September, among others.
Hiring
There are only a handful of vacant SDML teaching positions for next year right now, after a recent spate of hiring, superintendent of human resources and policy Angele Bartlett told the board of trustees.
“We’re actually looking pretty good right now in terms of staffing,” said Bartlett. “We have about five vacant positions left to staff for the year which is very good, considering the challenge that it is to have somebody to recruit teachers to come and relocate during the middle of a pandemic so I’m very pleased about that.”
Parents survey
About 450 parents have already completed a survey created and distributed by the school district, said superintendent of educational services and programming Lorie Henderson.
“There’s only 12 questions and what we’re looking for is School District of Mystery Lake parent feedback on remote learning experiences and ideas for returning to school in the fall,” said Henderson.
There is also a survey created by the provincial government that parents can complete.
The SDML survey was released June 9 and can be completed until June 23. It was sent out to parents by email and can also be accessed via the SDML Facebook page. Parents without internet access can call their children’s schools to arrange to complete the survey over the phone.
The survey includes questions about parents’ concerns and views on a potential return to in-school learning in September.
“We’re still waiting for the framework to be released by the province so we’re not really sure what it’s going to look like but if you fill out the provincial parents survey you may get an idea of some of the things that the province is looking at,” said Henderson. “We will be planning for a staged approach so that could possibly be full opening, partial opening, remote learning or a combination. It’s really important for parents to fill out the district survey because we do ask which school your student is going to so we’ll have a better idea of what the requests will be.”
Grant funding
The SDML school liaison RCMP officer Const. Sandy Deibert submitted a grant application for the Family Violence Initiative Grant and the school district has been approved to receive $20,000.
“We had this grant last year and we used it to provide dollars for three of our breakfast programs,” said Henderson. “We should get that between now and the fall so that will help with our breakfast programs for next year.”
Burntwood School roof
Burntwood School will be getting a new roof this summer, with the tender for the $1,169,830 project having been awarded to M.J. Roofing and Supply Ltd. The work should take about 100 days to complete.
Trustee Leslie Tucker asked if any of the bidders were local companies. Secretary-treasurer Kelly Knott said they were not, though seven bids were received.
“It’s my understanding there’s a lot more work involved with the type of school roofs that we have, with being layers of gravel and what have you, so that may deter some of the local companies,” said Knott. “We don’t usually see a lot of local appetite for school roofs.”
Finances
With the school year 94 per cent complete as of June 12, the district has spent only 78.5 per cent of its budget, due to the province requiring non-essential expenses to be ceased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have our summer accruals for our teaching staff through July and August that will bring … our budget numbers up,” said Knott. “We are tracking on plan, aside from the pandemic, and we’ll be closing out the year, I believe, in fairly good shape.”
Best wishes
The final board meeting of the school year ended saw superintendents and trustees express thanks to students and staff for making it though a trying year and hopes that the 2020-21 school year would be more normal.
“This was a weird year but we made it and I hope everybody has a great summer,” said trustee Samantha Chartrand.
“I’m glad this one’s hopefully in the books and we won’t have a repeat,” said trustee Guido Oliveira.
“It’d really nice not to repeat this again so hopefully next fall brings us back to a much more normal school year,” said board chair Don Macdonald.
