School Council – February 27th, 2017

Agenda / Notes
Opening/ Welcome / Welcome to Ross – Meeting commenced at 7:12PM
In attendance:
Jayesh Patel (Chair)
Lisa Miller-Wood (Principal)
Norma Dwyer (Vice-Principal)
Manisha Jain
Vivian Avotri
Theesan inganathan
Karen Anne Antiodes (teacher)
Steve Logue (teacher)
Jyoti Baniwal (teacher)
Reading of Previous Minutes and Adopting of Minutes / Approved by Theesan Linganathan
Matters arising from previous minutes / n/a
Traffic updates – our favourite topic / The city came in the morning and afternoon to observe traffic. They didn’t like staff being in harm way as they tried to direct students across the road. The really didn’t think it was good that Norma be greeting parents/ cars in the manner and position she was as that wasn’t safe. Traffic tickets were given in the morning but the enforcement didn’t come back in the afternoon. They are working on providing a crossing guard and will update the school at a later date.
Kick Off Parent Night – Healthy Schools Initiative (March 9th) /
  1. Are we expecting high attendance?
  2. What can we do to promote it?
This night will be packed with fun activities for families to take part in. Parks and Rec will be coming. There will be a rock climbing station. The cooking club that has started at school will be selling snacks. This will be an interactive night that is run by students with teacher supervision.
Ross Trivia – How well do you know Ross Drive Public School? / Trivia Challenge
Whole Kids / ● a non-profit organization
● founded by Whole Foods Market
● support healthy eating through various programs/grants
● Do we want to consider engaging with this organization?
Real Food for Real Kids / ● a for-profit company in GTA
● caters kids food to schools and child care centres
● focus on unprocessed “real” food
● Do we want to consider engaging with this company?
New Business: / CONGRATULATIONS to Norma Dwyer on making it through the Principal selection process. She is now in the pool to become a principal. She is just waiting for the call to her new school. We will miss her but acknowledge and recognize that she is needed in other capacities and that she will be great in her new role.
March 1st is the official Kick Off for the Board for Your Voice Counts Survey. Ross Drive will start after the March Break. This is an opportunity for parents to voice what’s going well in the school as well as suggest any changes they would like to see.
Vivian will look into a company that can deliver fruits and vegetables to the school as a possible snack program for the school to look into.
Kindergarten classes are invested in completing a greening project to change their current play yard into a more friendly space
-They are in the midst of creating a plan to change the concrete into a greening space
-Canada 150 has grants that could be given but a proposal needs to be in place
What could we fundraise for? The idea is to know what we would like to do with the money before we initiate a fundraiser… some possible ideas include:
-Kid size exercise bikes
-Bringing cultural activities to the school (karate, bangara dancing)
-Invest in modern learning classrooms (standing desks)
-Peel Police would like us to sponsor a special Olympian ($1500/ athlete)