Parent Night at John McInnis – Supercal Room – Feb 10 – 6pm

Changed to Van Bien Training & Development Centre

getting_behavior_in_shape_at_home (2)

Positive Interventions and Effective Strategies for Parents

Presented by Dr. Laura A. Riffel (The Behavior Doctor)

Dr. Riffel and her husband raised three children together and also chose to live with an adult who had autism, bi-polar condition, intellectual disabilities, and obsessive compulsive disorder. She will share parenting tips and techniques that all parents can use based on her years as a parent and over 30 years in the classroom teaching general and special education to Pre-K through adult levels. Dr. Riffel also ran a state-wide clinic for extreme behavior support in the state of Georgia serving over 500 children per year with functional behavior assessment and behavior intervention planning. Much of her training was with parents and teachers working together as a team. This presentation will share her ten rules of behavior, and give parents tons of resources.

Participants will learn general interventions applicable to every student in the classroom. These are field tested and will work for eliminating minor disturbances. Audience members will receive mnemonic tools to help them remember targeted group interventions which will help those students who need booster shots for attaining success and finally Dr. Riffel will share functional based interventions for those students who need intensive supports.

Positive Interventions and Effective Strategies for Parents

Presented by Dr. Laura A. Riffel (The Behavior Doctor)

Dr. Riffel and her husband raised three children together and also chose to live with an adult who had autism, bi-polar condition, intellectual disabilities, and obsessive compulsive disorder. She will share parenting tips and techniques that all parents can use based on her years as a parent and over 30 years in the classroom teaching general and special education to Pre-K through adult levels. Dr. Riffel also ran a state-wide clinic for extreme behavior support in the state of Georgia serving over 500 children per year with functional behavior assessment and behavior intervention planning. Much of her training was with parents and teachers working together as a team. This presentation will share her ten rules of behavior, and give parents tons of resources.

Participants will learn general interventions applicable to every student in the classroom. These are field tested and will work for eliminating minor disturbances. Audience members will receive mnemonic tools to help them remember targeted group interventions which will help those students who need booster shots for attaining success and finally Dr. Riffel will share functional based interventions for those students who need intensive supports.

Information is available at SD57 website: http://www.sd57.bc.ca/?id=499

It is important for parents to realize that siblings only have priority for registration in a choice school or program (Aboriginal, French immersion, Montessori, Traditional), or if they are attending their catchment school. If you have more than one child, and you are registered at a school that is not your catchment school, it is important to consider that you may not get all your children into that school. If this is a concern for you, you may wish to bring it to the attention of the Board.

With the recent BCTF court decision, it would appear that the maximum class size for kindergarten has now changed from 22 students to 20 students, and grades 1 to 3 from 24 students to 22 students. It is unclear how this is going to be handled, but it is also important for parents to realize that elementary schools may have even more capacity issues in the new school year. DPAC will be keeping parents posted on this issue.

On-line pre-registration is required for Kindergarten in all School District No. 57 elementary schools. On-line registration will take place beginning at 9:00 am on Monday February 3, 2014 at www.sd57.bc.ca. Children whose fifth birthday falls on or before December 31, 2014 are eligible to enter Kindergarten in September 2014.

Following a consultation process involving its partner groups, the Board has published a draft calendar for 2014-2015.  The Board will make a final decision on the calendar at its public meeting on February 25, 2014.

Next year is unusual in that spring break will take place in February.  In 2010, in support of the City of Prince George bid to host the 2015 Canada Winter Games, the Board of Education approved the scheduling of spring break in 2015 to coincide with the Games.  With that exception, the proposed calendar follows the same template as in recent years.

• Click here to see the calendar
• Click here to see the report that was presented to the Board

If you wish to provide input regarding this proposed calendar, please address your submissions to:

Wendy De Marsh, Executive Assistant

E-mail: wdemarsh@sd57.bc.ca

Passing the link along to any interested PACs: http://acf-film.com/en/index.php

The full text of the decision is here: http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/SC/14/01/2014BCSC0121cor1.htm

Iker said that in 2002, kindergarten class sizes were capped at 20 students, while Grades 1 to 3 were capped at 22. Today, those limits are 22 and 24, so each primary class will have to go down by two students. In 2002, class sizes for Grades 4 to 12 were negotiated by each school district, so there was no consistency across the province, Iker said.

In addition, in 2002 the contract included specific ratios for specialist teachers such as librarians and special-ed instructors, and rules about the numbers of special-needs children that could be in the same classroom. Some of those limits were provincial and others were negotiated within each district.

Iker would not speculate on the cost of restoring these limits, which presumably would mean hiring more teachers, but since 2002 B.C. has lost 1,400 specialist teachers, while close to 700 special-education teachers, more than 100 counsellors and 300 teacher-librarians have been cut from the system.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Court+orders+restore+class+sizes+million+damages+teachers/9436151/story.html#ixzz2rlSMvryL

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/analysis-court-ruling-a-major-blow-to-clarks-strategy-with-teachers/article16536749/

On Monday, the B.C. Supreme Court concluded that the Clark government has not just trampled the Charter rights of the province’s teachers for the past dozen years, but that it did so in an effort to manufacture a failure in collective bargaining for political gain.

Justice Susan Griffin’s ruling paints a picture of a government that stubbornly stuck to a political agenda, even after the court found Ms. Clark’s bill unconstitutional in 2011. When that verdict was delivered, a chastened Ms. Clark promised to fix the law. Her government vowed to “be entirely mindful of every word in the judgment.”

What the province did, however, was introduce virtually the same legislation, plus a $165-million fund for special-needs students.

The 2002 laws, Bills 27 and 28, took class size and composition – the number of special-needs students integrated into the classroom – out of the collective-bargaining process. Ms. Clark said at the time that the changes were needed to replace “rigid provisions and inflexible ratios with common sense and good judgment.”

The court Monday found a more sinister motive.

The B.C. Liberal government thought that a teachers strike would give it a political advantage, Justice Griffin found, and this mindset set bargaining up for failure and made disruption in the public-school system inevitable.

Further, Justice Griffin concluded that the government hoped to weaken the teachers’ union. The ministry of education’s superintendent for achievement “saw it as serving a useful goal of driving a wedge between individual teachers and the [British Columbia Teachers’ Federation],” she wrote.

 

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-teachers-win-legal-fight-to-bargain-class-sizes/article16525448/?service=mobile

These appointments were made in January, and don’t appear be available, other than in a school board agenda package.

Trustee committee and liaison appointments – Jan 2014

Please find enclosed the fourth edition of the 2013-2014 City of Prince George Pro D Day Flyer.  This flyer lists special programs, events, courses or activities that will be available to youth on January 31^st, 2014.  Please feel free to print and distribute or display the full document as well as electronically post the flyer on your individual school websites and distribute to all of your administration, teachers and staff: so that they can pass on the information to students.

We hope that as many students as possible can have the opportunity to enjoy some of the wonderful activities that are being offered on Pro D Day.

The Pro D Day Flyer will also be available to view on the City of Prince George website by January 24th:  please direct students and parents to the link below or add it to your school newsletters or bulletins as possible.

http://www.princegeorge.ca/cityliving/recreation/youthprograms/Pages/Default.aspx