AE Perry’s Principal Blog

Thursday, August 26th was the day that most principals and vice principals in our district set aside for professional development.   For secondary administration, this was their 4th day of work, while elementary administrators were shaking off much of the summer holidays and reporting for their first actual day of work.

We were whisked off on a couple school buses to McQueen Lake where we spent a day reviewing the reorganization of our district, and ensuring that all of us were aware of the changes that had been made.  A lot of time was spent discussing the reorganization of senior administration, and how the changes there will affect the district.  It will be interesting to see how these very busy people will be able to add more to their portfolios as we now have one fewer assistant superintendent.

For some principals and vice principals, this was the first time they had visited this amazing site.  For many, it was a return to a place where they had taken their own classes in the past while they were teaching.  For others, it brought back many fond memories of their own childhood when they attended the centre while going to school.  It is a beautiful site, and a place that our district can be hugely proud of hanging on to, despite the budgetary problems that have been experienced.  Thanks to a group of dedicated volunteers, the centre has grown and been updated a tremendous amount from its modest beginnings in the early 1970s.

Wow, has it ever been smoky here for the past couple days.  I’ve lived in Kamloops since 1963, and I can’t remember when it has ever been this bad.  It is so bad, that I am doing whatever I can to not go outside as it is difficult to breathe.  The fires that are still raging in central BC are creating lots of havoc, and with the prevailing winds right now, smoke has filled our valley (along with points east – northern Alberta, northern Saskatchewan, and more)

So, what does that mean?  It means that I get to spend more time “playing” on the computer.  I have been trying to learn more about Moodle and how I can use our school website to try and get more of our staff interested in using the features of Moodle with their students.  I think I have figured out how to get all of our staff to login into the Staff Information part I created on the website.  I have set it up so that only staff can log into this part, and it will be a place where I will post various things that are meant for them – weekly memos, staff meeting minutes, policies for discussion, etc.

I’ll just have to see how it goes, but I think they may begin to find this a useful tool, and some of them may begin to set up their own class sites within our school site.

As usual, the month of August is going by very quickly.  I am starting to get into the “return to school” mode, and beginning to think about the year.  It’s hard to believe that school has been out since the end of June and that the time has gone by this quickly.

Principals in our district have a professional development day scheduled for Thursday, August 26th, and elementary principals being in earnest on Monday, August 30th (secretaries, too).  That is usually a very busy week with new registrations, planning for the first day of school (Tuesday, September 7th), setting up schedules, determining what we will need, deciding what will go where, processing any ordered equipment that arrives, etc.

Personally, I’ve kept busy, but not thought too much about school.  I attended the Jack Brow track meet in Kelowna at the beginning of July, to mentor a friend who was working to upgrade his qualifications in photo finish.

For the rest of July, I was preparing for the BC Junior Development Championship track meet that our local Track and Field club was hosting.  I do the registrations for the club, as well as the photo finish and results during the meets.  From my perspective, the meet was a great success, despite a circuit breaker tripping causing us to lose our cameras for a while.  Fortunately, we were able to find the problem and get it solved.  We ended up only being about 15 minutes behind to start the afternoon races on the last day.  The maintenance staff at Hillside stadium were very helpful and accommodating to get us back up.

After that, we had our families over for our annual summer dinners and visits before taking off on a quick holiday to visit our son in Edmonton.  The weather was good, we had a great visit, and we had to return for some appointments by August 12th.  We decide to come back a new way, and travelled from Edmonton, through Rocky Mountain House, to Radium Hot Springs and then stayed that night in Cranbrook.  We needed to be home the next day, so were up travelling fairly early, going through Trail, to Rock Creek and then up to Kelowna before arriving home; two very long days of driving.

Now, because today is so smoky outside (the wind has blown the smoke from the fires in the Cariboo into our valley), I’ve been sitting at the computer catching up on email (and other things).  This is what has prompted me to begin thinking about the return to school.

Well,… until next time.

Well, it is getting close to Spring Break. Things have been very busy over the past number of weeks. Potential school closures and reconfiguration in our district has been a hot topic, with concerns about what is going to happen for next year being the main issue.

Our Board of Trustees has been meeting in the communities affected by potential school closures to hear from the parents and students. They have presented a plan for district reconfiguration, and are listening to suggestions from the public.

In AE Perry’s community, the main issue will be whether there is a decision to move all grade 7 students to the middle school model (7, 8, 9) at Brocklehurst Secondary school, with Norkam Secondary becoming a 10, 11, 12 Senior High.

This will affect AE Perry because we will no longer have grade 7 students, and will become a K-6 school. If the decision is to go ahead with this reconfiguration, that will mean that all of our grade 7 and our grade 6 students will be leaving at the end of June. It will certainly make for a different school for us.

As well, all north shore and rural elementary schools will be moving to full-day Kindergarten next year, so that will also mean for changes at the primary end of schools. There are lots of changes going to happen.

The Board of Trustees will make their final decision on reconfiguration at the Board meeting on February 22nd. All of us will know that decision later that evening or by the morning of February 23rd.

Well, I spent most of last week at the school getting ready for the students to arrive this coming Tuesday morning.  Am I ready?  In a word, – “NO”.

Most of the week was spent getting ready for our organizational meeting on Tuesday morning before the children arrive at 10:30.  There are a lot of things for us to discuss in that short hour-and-a-half time period, including the plans in place for the potential arrival of the H1N1 virus.  This district has put in place a plan, and all of us have to be up to speed to ensure we know what to do if students or staff become ill.

Hand washing is a big part of the plan, and we will have to spend some time teaching our students proper hand washing procedures, and then ensuring that they do so.  This should not be too difficult a process, as many teachers have been teaching their students effective hand washing techniques in previous years.  The main problem, I believe, will be to ensure that they don’t wash the germs away, and then acquire more by touching parts of the towel dispenser that may be infected.  This is a long-standing concern with many people.

Other parts of the week were spent trying to determine if we had room for all the families who registered during the week.  In many cases, we were full in our primary department, and had to put those children on a waiting list.  Our intermediate department had quite a bit of room.  Over the week, we received a number of requests for student records, from the schools these children were transferring to.  Of course, this then freed up room in some of the areas where we had waiting lists.  I believe that as of Friday afternoon (late), we were able to accommodate all families who had registered up to that time.

Now, we wait to see what happens on Tuesday morning.  We traditionally get 20 – 30 more registrations during the first week of school, so if we get that many more, we may be short of room again.  One of the things we may have to do is to re-organize from what we had planned in May.  Another possibility, if enough registrations occur and we can’t accommodate the students with our current staffing, is that we may get another teacher.  That process is usually slow, and there is quite a bit of disruption until the teacher is in place.  We’ll have to wait and see.

I just have to go in on the weekend for a few hours.  The newsletter is almost ready, but I forgot to put in a couple things from the district (School Board Meeting notes, and information about the public meeting schedule).  Once that is done, we will publish it on Tuesday morning so we can send it home with the students.

Well, I’ve done it again.  I’ve managed to procrastinate for most of the summer (along with having a great holiday), and haven’t done a lot to get ready for the return to school, until just recently.  This part means that I have begun thinking about the work that must be done this week to get ready for teacher and student return on Sept. 8th.

The office re-opens on Monday, Aug. 31st, and Mrs. Regier and I will be back at work.  I’ve been in a few times over the past week, just to pick things up, to return things I’ve used, and to generally see how the building looks.  There have been a few teachers in while I was there, and others have already been in to set up their classrooms.

With the recent Ministry of Education notification that they will not be funding the district projects that were done over the summer, it appears the district will be $2 million dollars short of their expected funds, so things will be even tighter this year than we expected.

It will be interesting to see if we get any new registrations this week.  When we left in June, our projections and registrations to that point were that our school was pretty full already, for the staffing we had been allocated.  Our primary department is pretty much full (only 2 spots available the last time I checked), and our intermediate department is almost full (I believe about 10 spots available).  If we get the usual 20 – 30 new registrations at this time of year, and no families have left that we were expecting to be here, there is a chance we will get another teacher.  However, the latest announcement around funding may mean I will have to find other schools for any new registrations to attend.

It will be an interesting couple of weeks, and one that is usually not a lot of fun for affected families and the school.  Lots to do in the upcoming week.

Well, I’m sitting here at home, procrastinating over the Easter Weekend.  I’ve got lots of work to do, but am not too excited about starting/continuing it.  Our school growth plan is due on Tuesday, and I have lots of work to do in order to get it ready for passing on to the District officers.  However, as I indicated, I’m a pretty good procrastinator.

One of my outside interests is the Kamloops Track and Field Club.  I’m a National level photo finish official, and I look after all their registrations, results and photo finish needs for their track meets.  Because of this relationship, I was asked to sit on the Board of Directors for the upcoming World Masters Indoor Championships in Kamloops, in March of 2010.  As well, I sit on the Organizing Committee for the Canadian Masters Track and Field Championships that are taking place in Kamloops, in July of this year.

So, rather than go into the school yesterday, I spend much of the day working on a way for the volunteers to sign up for the World Masters event, so that registering didn’t have to be done on paper.  I found that Google Docs has a way to allow information to be put into a spreadsheet by using a form that can be added to a web site.  This looks really good, and most of the day was spent designing the form, testing it to see if it would add the information we needed to a spreadsheet, and then seeing if the form could be added to a web site and still be used.

I think I met with success, so now I’m waiting for the person responsible for the volunteers to test it out to see if it will meet her needs.  Once that is done, I’ll show her how I did this (if she’s interested in this process) and she can create her own spreadsheet to collect the information.

In the end, I believe this will make her job for the World Masters, much easier to manage, and she’ll be able to keep track of the volunteers who wish to become part of the event.

Of course, my paying job isn’t getting done with me doing this task, but I found it much more of interest than composing and writing the updates to the school growth plan.  I guess I need to get at it, and will be going in to the school shortly.