Program Review Underway

The school board regularly conducts reviews of its various programs. As most of you are aware by now, a program review of alternative education will be taking place starting now and a final report produced by end of January. The draft framework for the review is available on the board’s web site (opens a pdf file). The Alternative Schools Advisory Committee (ASAC, representing all alternative schools in the board) had a number of concerns with the draft framework, but there were three that were seen to be particularly urgent: the timeline (which is rather short, compared to previous program reviews), the objectives (which focus on program elimination rather than improvement and better access) and the plans for consultation (which were minimal). At the June 16th meeting of the board’s education committee, some changes were introduced by trustees Campbell and McKenzie, addressing some of ASAC’s concerns. These concerned mostly the objectives and stakeholders. The report was then taken to the board meeting on June 22nd, where trustee Campbell introduced more amendments to deal with the timelines and comment process on the final report. These will be voted on at the June 23rd meeting. More to follow...