April 26, 2023 PAC Meeting Notes
JO PAC Meeting Notes
Date: April 26, 2023
Location: Zoom
Attendance: Gabriel Mugaruka – Co-Chair, Samantha Anderson Co-Chair + DPAC Rep,
Brent Schieman JO Principal, Celeste Munger Communications, Sue Bains Treasurer, +many others
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Meeting called to order – Gabriel Mugaruka
Welcome and introductions
Motion to approve Agenda- Sue Bains. Celeste Munger seconded; motion approved.
Move to approve March minutes postponed
Staff update postponed
Item 1 – Treasurer Report – Sue Bains
Gaming Account
- Current Balance sits at $4922.17
Consultative Account
- Current Balance in the account is $2974.45
Legacy Account
- Current Balance $332.14
A cheque for $1500 has been written on the consultative account to cover requests that did not fall into the Gaming Grant criteria and so were postponed to the spring when there was more clarity on available funds.
It is expected that some more funds will be distributed before the end of the year for Grad and for scholarships.
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Item 2 – Principal Report (Bent Schieman)
Minischool
- Minischool is away at Strathcona for the week
- Review of minischool programme
- A review of the minischool programme has led to changes to academic requirements to lower the number of required courses for mini and increase the elective choices outside of the mini programme
- Being done to bring JO mini requirements more in line with other schools and also because there are fewer classes, there have been scheduling issues so that some mini students can’t take courses such as Grade 12 French that have a scheduling conflict with mini required courses
- There will be a meeting with minischool parents and students to discuss further
Parent-teacher conferences
- Held in April
- There is a new reporting order from the Ministry of Education from the current 4 reporting periods (interim report, parent conferences, mid-semester report card, final report card) to 5 reporting periods- not sure what exactly that will look like yet
- We do want parents back in school for the sake of community building, but there are pros and cons to in-person vs online parent-teacher conferences
Numeracy and literacy assessments
- Grade 10 assessments taking place now
- Minischool kids will write them in June since they are away
- Anyone else who missed them will have a chance to retake them in November
- We have data from the previous assessments- should caution that these are from tests taken during COVID when kids had a lot going on and there wasn’t much preparation for the assessments and JO has a high English Language Learner (ELL) population
- Scored from 1 to 4 (beginning, emerging, meeting, extending)
- Results: 57-65% of students scored 3 or 4 on the literacy assessment, 9% lower than the VSB average and 35% of students scored 3 or 4 on the numeracy assessment
- Students tend to do better on the Literacy 12 assessment (65% have 3-4 scores)which is required for university than they do on the Grade 10 assessments which they know do not count for anything
School Plan
- Several meetings about the School Plan recently
- Focus on increasing literacy, numeracy and deep critical thinking- integrate into all courses, not just Math & English classes
- Plan will hopefully be finished at the end of May and will be shared with PAC then
School events
- Earthquake drill May 4th
- Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education group from Wales, Hawai’i and Sweden coming May 11 to look at the Tech programme
- Grade 7 tours May 30
- Science display for Earth Day on second floor
- Student Learning Survey
- Ministry of Education satisfaction survey of Gr 10 & 12 students; want a 99% response rate- currently at 60% & 40% respectively.
- Queston: some students are concerned about lack of anonymity because they have to input their PEN #. Brent: MoE uses the PENs to pull data by demographics and make sure there is only one response per student, but there is no
New FIT times
- District is requiring an increase of FIT time from 110 minutes to 160 minutes per week next year. Leaving it up to the schools to determine how to distribute it.
- School is currently consulting with staff, students and parents (now) on how to distribute it.
- Currently thinking 1st block (or between blocks 1 & 2) Monday and Friday and between afternoon blocks Tuesday and Thursday
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Item 4 Fundraising (Lihn Lam)
- Lihn not here, but Brent noted that we could hold the movie night any time after May 5th and he would be there if a teacher was not available
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Item 5 Governance (Samantha Anderson)
- We are seeking volunteers for PAC Executive roles. More info here. Anyone who is interested please contact the PAC Executive at pac_jo@vsb.bc.ca
- Elections will be held at the May 31st PAC meeting
- The PAC Executive has also drafted PAC By-laws. The draft is available here. The By-laws will be ratified at the May 31st PAC meeting.
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Item 6 District Parent Advisory Committee (DPAC) (Samantha Anderson)
- DPAC continues to oppose the VSB’s decisions to shut schools and deem school lands ‘surplus’ in light of current and projected increases in population and housing. They are lobbying senior levels of government about the VSB’s decision-making processes and demographic projections that do not make sense.
- At the next DPAC meeting on May 25th, the DPAC Facilities committee has given notice that they will be bringing a motion for PACs to vote on, as follows:
Motion: Enhancing Vancouver’s Education System through Transparency, Collaborative Planning, and Multi-Functional Facilities; A Call for the City of Vancouver’s Active Involvement
Be it resolved that the District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) requests the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver School Board (VSB) to jointly develop a comprehensive social infrastructure policy through transparent and participatory planning processes.
Be it resolved that DPAC requests the Joint Committee on Education to publicly disclose demographic projections of school-aged children in Vancouver, derived from both VSB and City staff data.
The full rational is here.
Celeste moved that the PAC ask Samantha to vote in favour of the motion, Sue seconded. PAC members present voted in the chat. The motion was carried unanimously.
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Meeting Adjourned
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Next meeting May 31st 7pm, 2023 at John Oliver School Library. We will also have an option to join the meeting online.
