OSOYOOS TIMES-March 3, 2010

By Karen Knelsen – Special to the Osoyoos Times

At its Feb. 24 meeting, the trustees of School District 53 passed a motion to allow full-day kindergarten classes for all the elementary schools within the district for the next school year except Osoyoos Elementary School.
The province has allotted funding for a total of 111 full-day kindergarten spots within the district.
But the district had aimed to provide 151 kindergarten spots between its five elementary schools in the 2010/2011 school year.
To balance out the 40 seats that the district will not receive funding for, the district’s board passed another motion to have district staff look into bringing in alternating full and half-day kindergarten classes in Osoyoos.
Full-day classes are more expensive than half-day classes and with a balance of 40 seats not receiving full-day funding, some students will stay on the status-quo half-day kindergarten schedule.
Juleen McElgunn, the district’s superintendant, said the reason full-day kindergarten won’t be coming to Osoyoos Elementary this year is because the school’s students showed “significantly less” vulnerability levels on the province’s Early Development Indicator, which measures areas such as language development, social skills development and physical development, compared to other district schools.
On Feb. 10, a special meeting was held at the Osoyoos Secondary School Mini Theatre which focused on the kindergarten matter as well as several other issues facing the district.
McElgunn said there wasn’t a lot of response regarding the matter of full-day kindergarten classes and board members expressed disappointment that they hadn’t received more feedback on the issue.
The purpose of the special meeting was to provide information to the community and gather feedback from parents of local students on topics including full-day kindergarten, the possibility of a four-day school week and options to supplement the provincial budget for the current and upcoming school year.
Parents and students used the forum to express concerns over the number of courses being dropped from the district’s curriculum and asked about exploring alternate funding sources.
Suggestions included commercial contracts, compacting the school week to a four-day schedule and even amalgamation of local elementary schools.
But in each case the district’s trustees said they had explored all the options and hadn’t found an appropriate way to efficiently boost funding.
Among other business dealt with at the board’s Feb. 24 was an enrolment report, which showed an overall drop of 33 students in the district’s schools, including a loss of one student at Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS), but two additional students at Osoyoos Elementary School.
The largest drop in students was experienced in Oliver, with a total loss of 29 students between the community’s three schools.
Provincial funding is based on full-time equivalencies, which brings the variance to a total of 20 fewer elementary students and 48.5 fewer secondary students throughout the district.
McElgunn said the report is based on mid-year enrolment and is therefore a very accurate look at the number of students in the district.
The board of trustees also approved the dry grad proposals submitted by the OSS Grade 12 class of 2010.
Graduating students from the school and their chaperones will hop on a bus after graduation ceremonies on June 12 and head to the Vancouver area for breakfast on Grouse Mountain.
After breakfast, students will spend some time riding the zip-lines and then head to the Playland Amusement Park for the afternoon before having dinner and heading back to Osoyoos on June 13.
Also at the Feb. 24 meeting, the board received a letter from the office of Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid informing it that funding for literacy planning and implementation will continue in 2010/2011 through support for the Community Literacy Outreach Coordinator for the region.
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