JO PAC Minutes November 18 2020

• By JO pac
• Posted in Meetings
• On November 30, 2020
• 1 Comment.

Meeting called to order 7:30pm on Zoom.

Attending: Sheril Gelmon – Chair, Wendy Sinclair – Secretary, Sue Bains – Treasurer, Brent Schieman – Principal, Nancy Pajleko- Teacher Liaison, Lara Spence – Communications, Sheri Wiwchar – Fundraising, Samantha Anderson – DPAC Liaison, and 14  parents. 

Minutes of October PAC meeting were approved. Seconded by Tracey Rossignal.

Principal’s report: Brent Scheiman: 

• Required provincial Numeracy assessment for grade 11s occurred recently. Any students that missed the assessment will do the test again in April.
• JO Student learning survey will be sent out in January for Grade 10’s and 12’s. The results of this survey were very interesting last year (January 2020). Shaped how the Administration thought about awards, etc. Found out how happy students were. 
• VSB  will be sending a survey to all parents for input on next years’ school schedule. 
• Q2 starts the week of Nov 18. Changed to a 1 week on and 1 week remote schedule. This is a pilot program.
• No news on any changes to the current calendar year schedule.
• Remind your kids to bring their masks to school. Please put a second mask in their bag in case they have forgotten one. 
• Report cards are being published on November 26th at 3p.m.  check MyEd.  Please note previous report cards will disappear off of myed, if you want to keep it, download it.
• There is an Indigenous focused day on Friday next week. 
• Grade 11 and 12: parents please sit down and look at graduation information on the school website. There is a lot of information about what your kids need to graduate.
• Brent discussed clubs and sports. Some clubs meeting virtually. Some sports practices were happening and will continue when provincial health regulations permit. Not all sports will be held all year. The onus is on your child to get the info for what they are interested in. There is a lot of info available on the JO website: https://www.vsb.bc.ca/schools/john-oliver/Pages/default.aspx 
• Kids should be looking at their Teams grade pages for info on things specific to their year. Grade 8 and Grade 12 have extra information just for them on their grade Teams pages. 
• There will not be any parent teacher conferences this year.  Teachers will contact parents if they see your child is struggling.  Parents, please contact your child’s teacher(s) if you have concerns. All teacher emails are available on the John Oliver Secondary website: https://www.vsb.bc.ca/schools/john-oliver/About-Us/Our-Staff/Pages/default.aspx 

Teacher Liaison Report:  Nancy Palejko

If your child is not coming to school for any reason, please call the school at 604-713-8938. You don’t need to provide a reason, but do call the office. The school and teachers need to know that your child is safe. Because we are now on the quarter system, if your child misses even one class of in-person learning, they will miss a lot of information and have a hard time catching up. Try to not book dentist appointments or driving tests during in-person class time. Have your student email the teacher to try to work on work missed. This is a co-operative effort with student and teacher. All teacher emails are available on the JO website. https://www.vsb.bc.ca/schools/john-oliver/About-Us/Our-Staff/Pages/default.aspx 

Finance Report: Treasurer Sue Bains 

Balances: Gaming $26,187.17 Legacy (for legacy projects only) $30,732.14  Consultative $6,300 (we can spend this on whatever we like; it was raised with fundraising). Adequate amounts will be set aside to fund the 5 x $750 scholarships from the PAC. 

DPAC Report (District PAC): DPAC Rep Samantha Anderson:

Samantha recently attended the VSB Budget Town Hall Meeting where she got updates on COVID money. This year there will be a bit of a surplus. DPAC wants all of the PACs to give input at the January Town Hall on how we would like this money spent.

Second meeting Samantha attended was a follow-up to the survey in May. This was supposed to be the main consultation. Looking at the long range planning for the Ministry of Education. There weren’t a  lot of people there. There was tension because the parents didn’t feel that there was adequate consultation. People wondered if there were going to be more meetings

PAC Funding Requests Discussion:

$7,050 was awarded by our PAC at the October 2020 meeting, and we received the BC Lottery gaming grant, meaning another $21,000 in the PAC Gaming account. 

It was recommended that the PAC revisit the existing not-fully-funded funding requests that were submitted to us via the JO Finance Committee (Principal Brent Schieman as liaison) in January 2021. We could fund the remainder of the requests, and see if more requests are brought forward. We are in a good position to fund requests. We should keep some money aside (in addition to the money we need for scholarships at the end of June) for next year because we can’t guarantee that the BC Lottery gaming grant money ($20 per JO student) will come in 2021 due to likely changes in provincial gambling spending. Parents are invited to review the documents on our site for what was requested in October, what we decide to fund in October, and submit feedback. We will post new request information in January 2021. 

No New Business 

Have a wonderful holiday season! You can always contact us via sherilgelmon@gmail.com. If anyone wants to volunteer or get involved, please let us know. 

Meeting was adjourned at 8:35pm.

Next meeting January 20, 2021, 7pm on Zoom. Watch the JO website and JO FB for info on how to pre-register.

Next meetings after that will be February 17, April 21, May 19, 2021.