Summit
In this issue:
- Potluck Dinner next Wednesday October 21st.
- Churchill Meeting on the Program Review tonight
- Information on Alternative Program Review and Surveys
Wednesday October 21st
Please bring a nut-free item and come out to meet the other families at
There will be a table set up with information on the Program Review and a chance to get involved and join one of the committees fighting to save our program.
Churchill Program Review Meeting Tonight
Churchill Gymnasium, today
This is a meeting to discuss the Program Review and let you know how you can get involved. It is open to all Alternative Parents in the board and so we encourage those parents who haven’t been able to get out to an information forum to come tonight. The board is not having information sessions on the review, so it is up to us to get involved and make our voices heard.
This is you chance to:
- Find out what is happening with the review
- Find out how the Alternative Community is responding
- Get involved and have an impact.
Alternative Program Review Surveys
The school board, as part of its ongoing review of all programs, has instituted a review of the Alternative Program, which is currently ongoing. The goal of the review is to determine if the alternative program should be cancelled, maintained or enhanced. You should have received a letter in the mail this week inviting you to take part in the review survey. The deadline is October 22nd, which is not a lot of time. Your responses to this survey will be the most important contribution you can make into this process.
The survey is out and you can find it by going to www.surveymonkey.com/APRElemStaff_Parents. It seems to only work if you copy it into your address space. Note that there is an underscore between staff and parents. You can access it from any computer including the school your children attend. The Board wants to know why you send your children to
Some suggestions for comments in your survey:
- In your comments section, tell them the timelines are too short, that it is not enough time to review our program.
- In keeping with the Alternative philosophy, we think that our children should be consulted too but no one is asking them how they feel.
- Be disappointed that this survey can be hard for some people to complete especially those without easy access to a computer or families with limited English. The letter we got in the mail is very detailed and hard to understand.
Survey 101: How to complete the survey so the Board will listen.
- Be specific,
- Refer to your own experiences as much as possible
- Don’t be shy about being really enthusiastic
- Use the language of Alternative:
a. Parental engagement (parents coming into the school to work on projects they initiate like Parent Seminars),
b. Student-led conferences where the children identify their goals and tell their parents how they will achieve them by showing their work,
c. Intrinsic motivation is where our children learn from within and not for marks or other rewards
d. Acceptance and integration of all children, our children recognize everyone’s special qualities
e. Talk about no competition instead of cooperation because most schools think they believe in cooperation and say so but the difference is we do not believe in introducing competition into the mix at all. We want our children to learn from each other rather than compete against each other.
- Make comments, they matter when the staff are analyzing the data
- When answering question number 29 think about how we offer choice with an Alternative program and how the board has not always supported us.
In addition, all members of the public can make a written submission to the review by sending an e-mail to: elementary_alternative_review@ocdsb.ca.
Updates, questions or comments and for a listing of committees if you want to get more involved go to http://programreview.asac-ottawa.org
We also have a Facebook group, Alternative Schools in Ottawa: More Choices