I am really concerned at the lack of respect that some of the elected school trustees seem to have for the intelligence of parents.
I also wondered at the real agenda of those members when I received yet another survey of my wishes for scheduling spring break.
I remember explaining my opinion last year in emails (which went unanswered) to trustees Cindy Schafer, Shirley Wilson, and Uultsje DeJong because they supported a motion to reduce the break to one week.
I said the break had been working just fine for years with the classtime made up by extended school days.
The response of voters like myself was so vocal that the board reversed its decision and restored the two-week break.
But I guess they didn’t really get the message, because those same members are trying to ‘fix’ it again.
This time they’re not arbitrarily changing the break without parent input; instead they’re trying to manipulate parents’ input, as if we were the children, by offerring us a Hobson’s choice between two untenable options.
They want us to choose between the provincial calendar with a one-week break (an option we’ve already rejected) or a second option that moves the break so close to summer as to make it pointless and different from every other district in the province.
This latter, though the fact was not mentioned in the background to the survey, has been estimated by district staff to add half a million dollars in costs to the yearly budget.
Like many parents, I don’t want either of these options, and I resent their efforts to manipulate the parent input process.
My family wants the two-week spring break to continue in mid-March as it has for many years. My kids are perfectly happy to put in those extra few minutes every day all year to make up the class time so they can have a break at the same time as their friends and cousins throughout the region.
Dan Jorgensen
