Lawrence Park School Council Meeting
Minutes April 11, 2016

Attendance:
J. Bragg, J. Hungate, A. Richter, D. Carson, D. Boughner, J. Bai, I. Kovalev, J. Rother, P. Trenton, R. Turnbull, M. Schummer, S. Paetkau

Welcome by Co-Chairs (S. Paetkau and M. Schummer)
Review and Approval of Agenda: D. Carson, J. Bragg
Approval of March minutes: J. Bragg, D. Carson

Student Update: (Ezra, Josh)
EQAO Tests in April for grade 10, New PA Day on April 15th, School Play April 19-21st “Arsenic and Old Lace”, May Lyrics will take place on May 12th. Student Elections are coming up at the end of May as well as the Spring Fling.  This will be a lunch where the students can hang around and there will be a BBQ.

Principal’s Update:
-She recapped the meetings that took place regarding football. The admin at LPCI met with Wildcats and Peter Change to gather information about uniforms and equipment.  They also meet with Mark Harrison, co-chairs, PhysEd ACL and the senior football coach. Lillian passed out a handout of all the clubs and teams at the school as well as the responsibilities of staff supervisors.  At the beginning of the year, staff has the opportunity to put their names down to supervise different sports and clubs.
-Admin is trying to post more information in the EYE on sports and clubs that is provided to them.
-She expressed her gratefulness to community coaches and volunteers, but reiterated that we need staff as advisors. The Spring Fling will need approximately 7 staff volunteers to happen. This is being worked on.

The first line of communication for parents is with your child. They would like to have student reps from each class attend monthly meetings with the student council and Admin. It would be a forum to ask questions from the classes and get informed. The reps can then share the information with their respective classes.  They are working making this have more participation and will include a message on the PA system once a month to call for a 5 or 10 minute in-class discussion of issues for the reps to bring to the meetings.

Staffing: 9 teachers were declared surplus last week. Next year will be 64 Full Time teachers based on the number of enrolled students, this year we had 69 teachers.  The bumping process will continue until September.

Lillian explained that less kids have been electing music courses of the last few years.  We will only have 6 sections of music next year. More students are choosing business classes and also hospitality classes have increased. They have added in a new forensic science class. There was a discussion on course selection with a few parents asking to be more involved if there are course conflicts.

Co-Chair Update:
We have been involved in the football discussions and are trying to look into how the staff advisor issues for all activities can run more smoothly and parents can be informed when it looks like an activity won’t run in advance. We are planning to speak with some teachers to get an appreciation for what the school council can do to be more helpful to them and support the curriculum. We will be having discussions on planning for next year at the May 16th meeting: discuss applying for a pro grant, executives for the coming year and also receive some school climate survey results.

Adjourn 7:30pm