Westwood/Eliot River Home and School Fall 2007 General Meeting-November 1, 07 

Opening Remarks - were given by Janette Conklin who thanked everyone for coming. 

President's Report - Janette thanked everyone who helped with the light bulb fundraiser.

Treasurer's Report - Glenda reported that the bulbs made $8034 which was divided equally for each school.  She mentioned that the current bank balance was $9760. 

Principal's Report- 

Home and School Meeting Principal's Report EIiot River Elementary School

I am sorry that I cannot attend the meeting and have asked Donnie MacFadyen, Vice Principal to read my report. He will provide the executive with a copy.

Programs and Activities

We have had a great start to the year. We have enrolled many new students and more are coming. We continue to be very active with many extra activies happening in Phys Ed and Music Clubs will be getting off the ground and we are introducing a new club this year called "Word Wizard". This will prepare students for the Can West Spelling Bee in the Spring. Early morning sports will begin mid November.

Two grade 6 teachers are piloting a new Math program. There is also a Math pilot at the Grade 5 French Immersion level. All our teachers have attended a one day workshop which concentrated on doing Mental Math with our students. A new grade 6 Social Studies program will be implemented, with in services beginning in January.

Parent teacher conferences were very well attended. It is always a wonderful opportunity to discuss ways in which we can best meet the needs of students. Report cards will be going home December 13.

Staffing

Shemla McIsaac has been hired as bus driver for Bus44. New staff this year include Margo Gallant and Rachael MacLeod, Core French teachers; Glen Gallant, mat leave for Cheryl Murphy and Bryan Bradley, mat leave for Amy MacMillan-Dallaire. Nicole Simpson has been hired as French Monitor and works between Westwood and Eliot River.

We welcome Beryl Diamond back as part time Administrative Assistant.

Fund raising Activities

Light Bulb sales went well. Each school still has some.

Scream park was a successful event, with over twelve hundred visitors. We cleared around $3600 which will go toward school programs and events.

Coupon books will be sold in November. Forms will be sent home with students on November 6 and returned on the 14^th and 15^th. The books will be sent home on Friday, November 16.  

Our Christmas craft fair will be on Dec. 1^st.  Planning is in progress and we invite parents to become involved, particularly in coordinating children's activities for that day. 

On the subject of class sizes:

I realize that this will be a subject to be addressed tonight and would like to be there personally to speak to it. I want to assure you that we will do our best at the school to bring the class sizes down in the future as we will continue to request a larger staff compliment. We are given an allotted number by our school board, who are in turn given a dollar allotment by our government.

School Raised funds

We are hoping that the fundraising initiatives will help us out with expenses in the following areas:

Cost of the DARE program Additional Phonic Ear Systems

Books and materials for the library and resource program. Replacement of Audio Visual equipment

Materials and equipment to support specialist programs

School Development

We are in the second year of our School Development Plan; the essence of which will be explained to you tonight in our presentation.

We are encouraging parents to receive their Eliot River News through email if possible. This cuts down on a lot of paper. Also, many teachers are blogging and you can check on line for happenings in you child's class by going to www.edublogs.org and typing in the teacher's name.

In closing, I want to thank you, the parents, for continued support. We have a wonderful school community and hope that we see many of you in the school. We can always use extra hands, particularly for the continuation of the breakfast and lunch programs.

Respectfully submitted

Anita Murphy Principal  

Home and School Meeting Principal's Report Westwood Primary School

This year we have some returning staff and several new staff members: returning from leave is Jennifer Kelly, grade 1 teacher. New staff includes Clodagh Peverly who is with us 30% and works with students in the area of reading and math; phys ed teacher Jacki Ross; Tina Baglole, grade 3 teacher from the Western School Board who is on an exchange with Terry Couture; Educational Assistants Lise Thompson, Shannon Ward, Jennifer Jenkins, Angela Smith (although Angela was here before); bus driver Shemlah Tawil MacIsaac, and myself, Charlotte Bryand, as principal. On leave this year until the end of June is Nicole Hazlewood-McGee. Our evening custodian, Louis Flood, will be leaving us on Monday to work at Charlottetown Rural. We wish him the best. We have two pre-service teachers this fall, Nana Puiia who is with Vickie Ward and the 3B class and Amanda MacAleer who is with Dora Burger and the 3C class.

In addition, we will have two more pre-service teachers coming from UPEI when they are permitted to come into the schools. We have four Bluefield High co-op students who work with three of our classes and the phys Ed teacher each morning as part of their school program. Eleanor Anderson, Speech Language Pathologist, works with our students each Tuesday.

We have a total of nineteen classes this year; seven grade 1 classes (five English and two French); six grade two (four English and two French); and six grade three (four English and two French). Westwood has 29.05 teaching staff this year; .7 of this is a pilot position that the ESD has given us for the year in the area of special education because we have such a large number of special needs children. We have 13 Educational Assistants; one full and one part-time secretary, one custodian and two cleaners. Finally, we have a total of 14 bus drivers who safely transport our students daily.

We have a number of teachers who sit on either district level or provincial professional committees. They are: Shelley Lamphier Flood who sits on a Classroom Composition Committee); Pam Sweetapple who sits on the Gr 1 French Immersion Language Arts Curriculum Committee and on the French Levelling Texts Committee; Dora Burger who is the Eastern School District's teacher rep on the Department of Education's Primary Literacy Assessment Working Committee; and I am the Eastern School District's principal representative on the Classroom Composition Committee. In terms of programming, this year is the first year of implementation for the grade 1 language arts Literacy Places program and the grade 3 French Immersion mathematics program.

We have some great things happening in our phys ed program this year. Jacki Ross has scheduled intramurals for all grades and she has organized after school extra curricular programs for various seasonal sports for our grade 3's. For the first year ever, Westwood students participated in both the zone and provincial cross country meets. Our grade 3's also enjoyed a sports fair that was held at the CARl Pool in early October. On Halloween afternoon, Jacki organized a fall frolic for all grades. Students rotated between stations set up around the school.  yard that were manned by teachers and completed fun activities at each of them.

Thanks to Sidney MacCallum and Jacki Ross, we have numerous four square and hopscotch games, as well as hockey nets painted on the asphalt areas which keep the children busy at playing games at recess and playtime.

We are fortunate to have a French Monitor, Nicole Simpson, with us on days 2, 4, and 6 to work with our French Immersion teachers and students. Carolyn Doyle is back with us the breakfast program coordinator. Once again we have numerous volunteers who come to the school regularly to read with our students, to assist in the library, and to assist in our breakfast program.  

Light Bulb sales went very well; thanks to the Home and School executive for co-coordinating this fund-raising initiative between the two schools. I believe we made in the vicinity of $4000 per school. Some bulbs are still available at both of the schools.

Westwood, like Eliot River, is in its second year of school development. This is an invigorating process for staff, students, and I think, the community. Our school development co-chairs are present tonight and will explain our plan to you. Along with Eliot River, we have been granted two additional staff development days by the Department of Education and we are looking at taking them on January 7^h and February 1st. We looked at a variety of dates but felt collectively that these days, one at the end of a holiday and one during a major Island hockey tournament (the

Spud), would prove to be least disruptive to families.  

We enjoyed a great turnout for parent teacher interviews last week.  Reports go home Nov. 14^th. We made about a $2600 profit from the book fair that took place all last week. Madame Wanda and last year's 3E class were invited to show their ArtsSmarts Project in the National Arts Smarts Exhibit at the

Confederation Centre in October. We send our newsletter home every second Wednesday; the next one will go out on November 14^th.  We do look forward to introducing a primary DARE program. 

We encourage your participation in our school. If you would like to come along as a volunteer,  

you are more than welcome, please just contact us in the office.

On a personal note, as a principal new to this school and community, I have appreciated the welcoming support of staff, students, parents, and the Home and School Executive. I have also more than appreciated the support shown me by our vice principal, Stewart Darrach, and the Eliot River administrative team of Anita Murphy and Donnie MacFayden. You have all made me feel welcome and I am proud to be part of this school community.

Respectfully submitted,

Charlotte Bryand

Principal, Westwood Primary  
 
New Business - Introduction of new Home and school executive members was done by Janette. Two new members were recently added - Lisa McKay and Lori MacDonald. Janette also introduced and thanked Maxine Mallett for her work on the past fundraisers. 

Old Business - Class size and growing student population. Lisa MacKay.

She mentioned that there are 29 kids in her son's class and wondered when the cut off would be. Is there a number that is a cut off point. Also we discussed, at what point does the teacher to child ration become too much.  What is the role of the home and school?  Janette said we'd like to support the schools and we will readdress the issued at executive level and see what we can do.

She told everyone that we have had discussions at our last two meetings about this, and will continue to.  She mentioned she doesn't know what our action should be yet.  Charlotte said she thinks it is the role of the home and school to advocate for our children.   
Meeting adjourned. 

Introduction of guest speakers.

Steve Coleman, Leslie MacDonald, and Darren Ford (ER Staff).  They introduced and talked about the school development program.

School Development Plan 

Eliot River School is in year 2 of a three year school development plan. This plan will be focusing on two areas that staff feel need to be improved on:

1. Behavioral Concerns

2. Writing Skills

Work has begun on both of these areas at the staff level and is being introduced to the children. 

They have introduced a new system so students can rate what level their actions are operating on D - Democracy,  C- Conformity, B- Bothering, Bullying, A - Anarchy

Their approach will encourage students to exercise self-discipline through reflection and self evaluation. Students learn to control their own behavior, rather than always relying on the teacher for control. 

In the area of Writing, staff are currently reviewing articles and books to develop strategies and plans for improving student's writing using the 6 + 1 Writing Traits that involve: Organization, Voice, Content, Sentence Structure, and Conventions. 

So far they are very pleased with the results they are seeing. 

Introductions of Westwood guest speakers-

Pam Sweetapple and Charlene Matthews (WW Staff) 

At Westwood our academic goal is to improve and enhance our students' reading comprehension and our behavior goal is to develop social skills with our students that will enhance a positive school culture.