Good morning!
March has been a blur. We got a tonne of input from the Your Voice process and the results are being presented tonight at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre. The core document is 500 pages, so trustees have had it since late last week. We received it early so that we could try to read through it and form questions for tonight’s presentation from management. All the information will be available online for those who can’t make the public meeting. That meeting takes place tonight at the Shaw Auditorium at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre.

We have begun the budget process. For the last two Tuesdays, we have had special Business Committee meetings at 4:30 pm to being reviewing our costs. We have also been looking at comparisons between our district and similar sized districts. I know there has been some frustration and disappointment voiced that these meetings are taking place over what is the dinner hour, as opposed to our more usual 6pm time. I brought the issue up again yesterday and the consensus was that at this point we couldn’t go back and change the times. I know that at the end of the budget process I’ll be looking for us to evaluate our practices and come up with strategies to improve upon it next year. Please send us your input so we can consider it as we do this work. One thing we confirmed at yesterday’s meetings is that all budget documents and presentations from these meetings will be available on our website.

Also please note that we are currently looking for input on the proposed school calendar for the next 3 years. One thing we are looking at is a two week Spring Break, which is becoming more common throughout the province. You can find the survey on our website. You can also email your thoughts to communications@sd68.bc.ca – I know some people felt they had input they wanted to give that wasn’t quite covered in the survey questions.