Salisbury Morse Place Community School Association

Monthly Meeting Minutes

May 19, 2016

Present: Marjorie Millman, Jenn Eccles-Kreger, Heidi Wiebe, Olga Barnes, Danielle Beaudry, Marcela Popwich, Helena Klippenstein

  1. Welcome:

-meeting commenced at 6:30 pm

-reviewed minutes from April meeting, motion to approve made by Jenn, second by Hiedi, approved

  1. Administration Report:

-Current enrollment – approximately 558 students

Highlights of the Past Month

  • Thank you to the CSA for supporting our efforts in bringing the group Fubuki Daiko to our school. The students learned a lot about Japanese drumming and had a wonderful time doing so
  • Our grade 7 & 8 students performed at the Level I Band Festival
  • Congratulations to all of our students both French Immersion and French Communication and Culture who competed at the divisional Concours d’art oratoire
  • 64 of our grade 4 & 5 students have been taking swimming lessons every Thursday through an agreement with the City of Winnipeg. It is a 10-week program
  • Music Monday kicked off May with students celebrating and sharing their love of music with other students during school entry on that day
  • Grade 6 students took part in a badminton tournament with Hampstead, Sherwood, and The King’s School
  • SMP hosted our second Regie Routman writing residency. An opportunity for teachers to learn together from Kindergarten to Grade 8
  • MYTP came and performed Peg and the Yeti to our grade 1 – 5 students
  • Thank you to all who attended our Night in the Library in honour of Mrs. Robson our late library technician
  • Our grade 5 & 6 FI students when on a tour of John Henderson
  • We have completed all of our transition meetings with our sending and receiving schools.
  • We are currently in the process of school planning as we start to think about next year.
  • SMP had a great turnout for the Preschool Growing and Learning Event
  • We will definitely be having two French Immersion kindergarten classes next year
  • The English kindergarten is still on the fence. If we get more students registered, there will be two classes as well.
  • Thank you to the CSA for your patience at the CSA movie night. Overall it was a success despite the bumbling admin. show – sheesh!
  • We are preparing to say goodbye to our grade 8 students and our grade 5 & 6 French Immersion students.
  • SMP hosted a Day in the Life of Kindergarten on May 18th. We were expecting approx. 30 people and were happily surprised to see that number double.
  • Grades 1 – 3 students took part in the Folk Dance Festival on May 18th
  • Today was the Track and Field event for our middle years students
  • Patrol training has begun

For Your Information

  • All school committees are currently wrapping up their work for this year and starting to focus on next year’s goals.
  • We have made some changes to our daily reading and writing time by adding numeracy – two days reading, two days writing, two days numeracy
  • We are looking at planning a small “Crossing the Link” ceremony for our grade 5 students who are moving from one side of the building to the other
  • The CSA’s query followed up by your letter in regards to your concerns about the general condition of the school, school grounds, and the excessive amount of pea gravel are being taken very seriously. I have been in almost daily talks with Maintenance and they are working to resolve these problems
  • We will be making a number of changes to our current classroom configurations for the 2016-2017 school year to support our students and our language programs
  • Have you noticed our walls lately? Our Hallway Committee has been hard at work sprucing up our look! Stay tuned! They’re not done yet!

School / Teacher Requests

  • Request from Mrs. Neufeld – Music specialist - $400.00 to support the Winter concert expenses
  • Request from Ms. Tichborne – Art specialist – Up to $1000.00 to support an Artist in the School for MY in 2016-2017
  • Request from Ms. Zaroda – MY teacher librarian – Up to $1000.00 to support the purchase of furniture for the MY library in the effort to create a library learning commons
  • Request from Mr. Goold and Ms. Pattern-Regier – up to $600.00 to support a teaching and learning garden off of the kindergarten room that would be used by all students but cared for by kindergarten students

-motion to have the proceeds of the bake sale to go towards supporting the costs of the winter Concert made by Danielle, second by Helena, approved

-motion to grant the request from Mrs. Tichborne for $1000 to support the ‘Artist in the School’ for MY made by Danielle, second by Marcela, approved

-motion to grant the request from Mrs. Zaroda for $1000 to support the purchase of furniture for the MY library made by Jenn, second by Heide, approved

-motion from Mr. Goold and Ms. Pattern-Regier for $600 to support a teaching and learning garden made by Danielle, second by Marcela, approved; Heidi will approach Rona regarding this (needs letter which M. Millman will provide)

Staffing Update:

  • Mr. Klassen is the proud parent to another baby boy who was born in April
  • Ms. Oakes will be gone until the end of the school year
  • Mrs. Harris will be returning half time next year as our new Reading Recovery teacher
  • Mrs. Tryon has accepted the position of Literacy Support teacher for SMP
  • Mrs. Zaroda is the new Middle Years Library Teacher Librarian for 2016-2017
  • Mr. Barto will be leaving our school and joining the staff of John Pritchard Junior High
  • Mme Bailey has been appointed as the new vice-principal of École Centrale
  • Mme Friesen will be leaving our school and joining the staff of École Centrale
  • Mme Williamson will be leaving our school at the end of the school year. She is looking to continue her career in British Columbia
  • We have been successful in hiring French Immersion teachers for all of our classes
  • There will be more staffing announcements in the near future
  1. Lunch Program Report:

Staffing and Attendance

No change in numbers. Staff have completed the self-evaluation forms and I have met with employees individually. So far, only one person will not be returning. I had employed another person to work part time last year and she has agreed to work full time. In September, should the number of students staying for lunch support it, it may be necessary to hire another supervisor. The number of proposed classrooms is 14, whereas this year we had 13. However, it is the number of students that use the program that determine how many we can hire. There are 41 Grade 5 students who will be leaving and potentially 48 new students in Grade l. Two of the Middle Years students who microwave for us will be leaving at the end of June so we are currently training two new students.

Other Matters

I have contacted Fields to arrange the annual microwave check. We currently have eight in operation and one spare.

It is our policy to purchase gift cards for the end of year lunch for supervisors, the amount to be at the discretion of the board. We purchase gift cards for our four middle years students who have helped us with the microwaving. Two of the students will be leaving this year and I normally purchase a gift card to reflect their years of service. I propose we give two students gift cards at $30.00 for 3 years service and two students at $10.00 = $80

We had discussed purchasing games/toys etc. for the classrooms at the last meeting. We had a good deposit in April, over $5,000. We will not make payroll in May and June which will reduce our bank balance but there is still sufficient to purchase the toys. If we allow $200 per classroom and work on 14 classrooms for next year, the total would be $2,800. I discussed it with Beata (book keeper) and she felt we could go ahead.

-motion to approve above mentioned gift cards for student helpers made by Helena, second by Heidi, approved

-motion for supervisors to receive $20 gift cards each (9 staff equalling a total of $180) made by Jenn, second by Danielle, approved

  1. Financial Report:

-$1220.52 has come out for the Buddy Bench, $1120 has come out for the student bussing, $16.50 has come out for babysitting; movie night sales were $402.30, expenses were $345.95, leaving a profit of $56.35

-bank balance is $3,828.53

  1. Fundraising Report:

-ideas for 2016-2017

-“Mall Night” – Nov. 23/16 (early dismissal), May 3/16 possibly

-Bake Sale – Winter Concert in December

-Show and Save and Momentum (combined) – September 2016

-Hoffmann’s, Pizza Hotline, Black Pearl Coffee – Feb/Mar 2017?

-leftover snacks from the movie night went to the office for students when they are hungry; leftover popcorn went to the company who donated the bags

  1. Old Business:

-staff appreciation day – breakfast, any Monday before the end of the year, motion made by Danielle, second by Sherry, approved

  1. New Business

-elections for CSA positions at next meeting

-Jenn to do a write-up for positions opening up

Meeting adjourned @ 8:05 pm. Next meeting is June 16, 2016.