“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Nelson Mandela
July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013

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Note: The Report of the SD61 Committee on Public Engagement is posted on the SD61 website. It includes 14 potential strictures on asking a question at a Board meeting if you’re a member of the public, and is addressed in this meeting. The draft bylaw changes will be debated at OPPS meetings until they’ve all been addressed and then will need to be approved by majority vote at a Board meeting.

The Record Off The Record is my personal record of and commentary on Board and Standing Committee meetings in School District 61 (Municipalities of Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Victoria, View Royal and a portion of Saanich and Highlands ). “Official” approved minutes of Board and Standing Committee  meetings  are posted on the SD61 website under the “Board of Education” menu,(Education Policy Development Committee is posted as “Education Meetings”; Operations Policy and Planning Committee is posted as “Operations Meetings”) generally one month after the meeting.

Reports from In Camera meetings are posted on the Board meeting page as “Section 72 Reports”. “Section 72” refers to Section 72 (3) of the BC School Act which states “ A board must prepare a record containing a general statement as to the nature of the matters discussed and the general nature of the decisions reached at a meeting from which persons other than trustees or officers of the board, or both, were excluded, and the record must be open for inspection at all reasonable times by any person, who may make copies and extracts on payment of a fee set by the board.” Key word: “general”. Reports  to the public in attendance at a Board or Standing Committee meeting directly following the In Camera meeting in addition to the “general” report required from an In Camera meeting are only made if a motion to do so is made and carried by majority vote in camera.

The public meeting schedule is posted on the District Calendar.  Trustees  are referred to by last name only for brevity; “the Board of Education of SD No. 61 (Greater Victoria) is referred to as “the Board [etc]”. Motions are shortened and “subjunctified” but retain the essential wording. No audio recordings are made of Standing Committee meetings, only of Board meetings. [No record of how the audio recording decision was made, or any debate on proposed uses of and storage of the record appears to exist.]

To Dec 2013: Trustee assignments

I am not on the GVTA Negotiations Advisory Committee, though that’s what this assignment (by the Chair) chart says. I still don’t know if the GVTA Negotiations Advisory Committee above is the same thing as the two trustees who sit at the local issues bargaining table with the teacher employee group, or if that is called something else. Two trustees do sit at that table and neither of them is me, since as far as I know, they are Orcherton and Ferris, not Orcherton and me. The BC School Trustees Association states: “Trustees in some districts participate directly in union negotiations; in other districts the bargaining is left to staff and the board approves the negotiated agreements.” Trustees in SD61 do not have any part in developing bargaining objectives (as far as I know), although we are responsible for them.