Quilchena PAC

Present: See list attached (“Attendance”). This list will be attached to the original Minutes as kept in the Secretary’s binder, and available to Quilchena parents on request.

February 2006 Quilchena PAC Meeting

1. Opening Remarks

Barb G., PAC Chair., called the meeting to order at approximately 7:05pm.

2. Agenda and Minutes

The agenda was distributed at the meeting. A copy of the agenda is attached to these Minutes in Appendix 1.

Motion: To adopt minutes of Jan 19th PAC Meeting minutes.

Motion moved by Shereen, seconded by Zane and carried.

Motion: To adopt Agenda for Feb. 22nd PAC Meeting minutes.

Motion moved by Lisa, seconded by Zane and carried.

3. Chair’s Report (Barb G.)

1. PAC received a thank you card from Val Coopersmith for the camping table presented to her when she left the school.
2. The Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society sent a thank you note for being able to participate in the Chinese New Year Festival.
3. On Feb 16^th, Q parents heard from guest speaker Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Riechl speaking on “Five Ways to Create more Caring and Competent Children.” The Power Point slides from this presentation can be found on the Q web site. Thank you to Karen Thompson for organizing this beneficial evening for parents.
4. 60 printed copies of the Christmas Pageant ”Lights of the Season” DVD have been sold. Thanks to Jean A. and her husband for their work on this.

4. Principal’s Report (Mme Humphries)

1. Registration for Kindergarten for September 2006

   As of this date, 35 children are registered for September 2006 French Immersion Kindergarten, of which 8 of these are siblings of children already at Quilchena. There are 22 available spaces in total. Of the 14 English Kindergarten registrations to date, 4 children have also applied for French.

   French Immersion Registration ends Feb 28^th. English registration ends March 1^st.

   The lottery for French Immersion placements will be held March 6^th at Trafalgar Elementary School.

2. Reorganization of the French Intermediate classes for the 2006/2007 year.

   Mme Humphries has evaluated the class structures, available teachers and their qualifications. Classes will remain split 5/6, and 6/7 but each teacher will teach both the English and French components to the classes. This will eliminate the possibility that children will have the same teacher(s) for 3 years.

3. Fire Alarm on Feb 10^th

   A review of fire procedures was done after the false alarm on Feb 10^th. Revised emergency procedures will be documented and printed in the next newsletter which asks parents to review and respect the procedures. Some issues to be addressed were: teachers leaving the classes without a class list, children going to their correct meeting places, and parents will have to wait for the teacher to dismiss the children before they take children off the property.

4. A signed letter from all the Quilchena children will be sent out to the Chinese New Years Festival Committee to thank them for organizing such a wonderful event.
5. Basketball is now finished for the year and the students played very well. Parents are thanked for driving all of children to each of the games.
6. Cross Country Ski lessons are underway at Cypress Mountain. Safety issues and protocols will be addressed with everyone involved. There will be numerous field trips between now and the end of the year for all the different grades in the school. Children will be going to the Aquarium, Symphony, on coyote safety awareness programs, and to the Museum of Anthropology to name a few. A question was asked on how decisions were made on whether parents drive to these events or a bus is rented. Policies allow teachers to make these decisions and they need to consider issues such as Booster seat requirements, safety belts, side air bags, costs of cars vs. buses versus the number of students going on the trip, etc. It was proposed that Field Trip Insurance forms be filled out in September by all parents in order to prevent last minute confusion on the day of the trip.
7. Valentine celebration was a success.

5. Teacher’s Report: Theresa McNicoll

Theresa advised the PAC of the procurement of new computers for the Computer lab and classrooms. She thanked the PAC for their support in making this possible.

• Please see handout of Information Technology for full details of computers attained.
  • 16 PC Pentium 4’s go into the Computer Lab
  • 20 PC Pentium 3’s go into the classrooms
  • 16 PC Pentium 3 coming out of the lab will also go into the classrooms
  • 8 additional computers will go to either Resource/Library/Staff
• $10,000 was allotted by the PAC for the computers in November 2005; see handout distributed at the meeting.

Theresa is working to upgrade the computer neighborhood network to a true LAN network within the Computer Lab and then into the classrooms in the future. She will be working with the VSB computer technician over the spring break to make technical changes. She is looking for parent assistance on Spring Break to assist.

6. Library Project — Heather K.

John Bromley agreed to head up project, and a Committee is being formed. Further details will follow at subsequent PAC meetings.

7. Finances — Jean A.

Jean reviewed Financial Summary as of Feb. 15^th. See attached handout for full details.

Brief summary includes:

Motion: To approve (1) a request for $4,000 for 16 computers and (2) an allocation of $12,000 for library project.

Motion moved by Heather K., seconded by Lee-Anne M.

Discussion—Library project funds have been set aside but the committee will have to put forth plans to PAC before funds are released.

8. Advocacy

VSB French Immersion Update: VSB made some very short term recommendation which didn’t address inadequacies of unequal access between catchments. The FI Task Force acknowledged these problems but never addressed them. VSB was going to take their original recommendation to Board. Barb G. wrote letters and spoke to the Superintendent about process. As a result a special meeting was held with two neighboring schools with FI (Kerrisdale and Trafalgar) schools and some possible recommendations were made that are to be considered. The following information was supplied by Barb G. which outlines some of those details:

As of this date, Option #2 as seen above is seen as feasible by all three schools. Option #1 is being explored by VSB facilities staff and they will discuss it with staff and parents of Quilchena in the coming weeks. Parents will be kept informed as the discussions continue.

There will be an upcoming meeting with adjacent PAC’s on March 1^st as a follow up to the joint meeting that was held in November with our mutual MLA. This meeting is being organized by the Southlands Elementray PAC and will give parents from Southlands, Kerrisdale, Maple Grove, QE Annex, Shaughnessy, Trafalger, QE, Carnarvon and Quilchena elementary schools a chance to discuss a range of common issues.