Message From Chair Jennifer Sarlo

The past year has been both challenging and rewarding as we have navigated through an unprecedented period of labour unrest as provincially we worked out the logistics of a new bargaining process. As difficult as this process was, we are thankful that as a Board we were able to maintain positive working relationships and student learning remained at the forefront of our priorities.

 

The common vision of Building Confident Learners and Caring Citizens continues to resonate throughout our system as the driving force behind all of our decisions. Strategic priorities of Achievement, Well Being and Engagement have been the focus of our Committee of the Whole Board meetings and are the foundational pillars of our program and financial investments. Our efforts to continually review and realign our capital plan to right size our system to provide the best possible learning environments for all of our students has resulted in a number of building additions, renovations and consolidations of our schools in the past year. Commitments from the Ministry of Education to fund these projects is a testament to the hard work and perseverance of our senior administration in presenting a strong case for our capital vision and the work that we have done as a Board in making the right decisions on school closures and consolidations. We will continue to present to the Ministry our new priorities for capital investment and reinvest our resources from surplus properties to improve our facilities.

 

With a new mix in our dynamic leadership team, we will seek every opportunity from the classroom, to the budget discussion, to the Board table to strive to best meet the diverse needs of every student in our system. I look forward to continuing to work with our Director Lucia Reece, our strong Senior Administration team and our passionate Board of Trustees as we further drill into our strategic priorities around achievement, well-being and engagement in the coming year.​