糖心Swag

Zoom Answer: Superintendent Nixon - Yes we have.  The options are we can have the students remain in the current multi campus configuration with any additional suggestions you may have.

Alternatively we can consider if you have an older child and you would like them to go to NorKam and a younger child stay at Sun Peaks.

There is a lot of room on this survey to provide exactly what you see as being the best alternative, and we will take all of those into consideration.

Q: How much would it cost to have the 8/9 portable moved to P5?  It's 2 km. Also the kids there (including mine) have to use another portable's washrooms so what is the difference? I feel the 'washroom' portable is a deflection.

Zoom Answer: Director McDonald - Most recent portable move was about $110,000 within catchment.

Director McDonald - The 8/9 students are using the Academy washrooms and the layout of that portable is a little different where the students come in the back and go down a mini hallway to the washrooms whereas the P5 location they would have to walk through the classroom space to use the washrooms.

Q: Has the idea of the K/1 students going to P5 been explored?

Could the age of students that are going to the permanent location at P5  be re-looked?

With the new daycare opening tomorrow, many of the new 2024 K鈥檚 will be comfortable in that area anyhow, and possibly a library etc there. Speaking as a new Kindy parent of a December baby this also would be easier for parents (even with younger siblings/babies) to get their Kindy鈥檚 to and from school in all seasons, without the hike for the youngest kids of the school and also the stress of the littlest ones having to be a confident skier on the platter in Nov. Just an idea-although I鈥檓 sure it has been thought of before.

Zoom Answer: Superintendent Nixon - Yes, we can look at various configurations when we get the answers from the survey. 

Superintendent Nixon - Yes, the age of students can be looked at. We will have more information when we get the results of the survey.

Superintendent Nixon - These are good ideas and we have had some thoughts like that before. I appreciate the way you have explained it.

Zoom Answer: Assistant Superintendent Hamblett - The request to have grade 8/9 join the sunpeaks school was requested by the community. That took some of the students out of the academy which was grade 10-12 and is the graduation program.

There are currently 25 students in the grade 8/9 classroom. There is a 1.0 full time equivalent teacher for this classroom.

There are 14 students in grades 10 to 12 learning online through @KOOL in conjunction with the Sun Peaks Education Society.  

In total, this would be 39 students and would still require two portable spaces. 

Q: It is not my desire to see my child or my communities children bussed to another community. The grass roots community fundraised to create a school which grew rapidly to have 糖心Swag manage it and it has continued to grow. The population here is dependent upon real estate availability. It is very different growth compared to Kamloops suburbs. What we don鈥檛 have (ie gym), we make up for with other assets (ie ski, etc) I鈥檓 not sure why Heffley is even a point of discussion. 

Aren鈥檛 we here just to discuss moving 8/9 portable to P5 to reduce 3 campus to a more manageable 2 campus school? To move 8/9 or not? Isn鈥檛 that what we should be focussing on?

Zoom Answer: Superintendent Nixon - For some parents, that is exactly what the focus is, but we also have received a number of emails from parents initially requesting inclusive supports, which is why we have included Assistant Superintendent Mochikas here. Some parents want to know about supports and how they get them. Others were asking about maintenance, and they had concerns about various aspects of maintaining the current multi campus.  

It was proposed to us to talk about a number of things because of the questions coming in.

Q: Just thinking of creative solutions, are double stacked portables an option for space saving? Understanding costs and environment may not allow for this but I'm curious if there is potential for something along those lines.

Zoom Answer: Director McDonald - It has been considered. The biggest challenge with double stacked portables are the accessible ramps. 14 feet off the ground and ramps would need to be 100 feet long to adhere to accessibility requirements so we run out of space very quickly. We would also then have to remove the existing portables that are there because they do not allow for that configuration.

Q: In terms of students' ideal development (G8/9), what would be the ideal option academically speaking, to build more relationships with G 10-12 or to mix more with G4-7?

Q: I wonder if our lack of growth is due to the district paying to bus students out of the catchment area. Why doesn鈥檛 a bus bring students to Sun Peaks?

Zoom answer: Superintendent Nixon - We do not bus kids to a non catchment school. So we wouldn鈥檛 bring them into a non-catchment school. The kids that are going out are going to NorKam, which is their designated school and for any of the other kids you saw in the initial slides that are busing out, like all students, parents have an option if there is room in the school to ask for a transfer. So it would mean making a commitment not to do that or there may be a reason that you or I are not aware of. That鈥檚 where it gets tricky. because any school we look at in our district there are non catchment students attending for various reasons.

Q: Thank you to you all for making this time and space for our school community! Should all remain as is (and the existing 8/9 portables not be moved), what is the likelihood that a new portable will be allocated for our school for the 2024/25 school year?

Zoom Answer: Director McDonald - For the 2024/25 school year, as we do for all of our schools, in the spring as part of the long range plan, we look at potential enrollment growth in the enrollment forecast for the following year and that determines whether or not we look at placing additional portables at schools.

Q: I would like to chime in with the idea to have the 8/9 join the academy next door. I wonder if it would be possible to visit the schedules of the two campuses to allow for overlapping breaks to let kids mingle and to give the teachers at that location the opportunity to collaborate. So rather than combining the two campuses, just create an environment for the two groups to mingle.

Zoom Answer: Superintendent Nixon - in a perfect world what I would love I'd love for you to have a deadline of Friday and the reason is we could make it Monday but the reason is I'd love to be able to look at the data over the weekend come back with a preliminary report for the board but I think we make it Friday see how many responses we get if we don't have a really high response rate we'll extend it to Monday.

After the Zoom meeting: We decided to extend it to Monday immediately based on this question.

Zoom Answer: Superintendent Nixon - Yes, we would consider it because we always consider any of these options when raised, but I do look at one of my colleagues who seems to have a lot of ideas so just one moment.

Assistant Superintendent Reilly - it's definitely something we could consider but it's important to recognize that schools of choice are not provided busing so students who are outside of the catchment or would be able to attend but they are responsible for getting to the some peak school on their own.

Zoom Answer: Superintendent Nixon - It hasn't been measured  but we can certainly answer this later in the Q&A.

After Zoom Answer: Burfield Drive to the P5 location is 3.4 kms based on google.com

Q: With an 8-12 Sun Peaks campus would 糖心Swag then fully fund and operate all of these grades?

The District funds the educational operations of a school which includes staffing, classroom and student supplies, repairs and maintenance, custodial, grounds and information technology to name a few of the departments that support a school.

Q: I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much everyone at SBO.

A: Superintendent Nixon: Usually we consider whatever we do for support staff at the time that enrollments come in.

Assistant Superintendent Reilly: It's a really good question. So thank you for sharing that one out loud to everyone. We would be looking at doing our best to have secretarial staff up at the mountain. We do have some questions around, where would that person be situated and what would that look like.  We have some work on our end to figure that out, but it would be a hope of ours to have somebody up in the mountain.