The trustees of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division cleared a number of detailed business items from their docket on Sept. 17 when they met for a general public business session in the division’s head office in Weyburn.
One of the first orders of business was to ratify the local implementation and negotiating committee (LINC) agreement with the 550 or more teachers who are employed by the division. The localized contract deals with peripheral issues such as compassionate and bereavement leave of absence, substitute teachers’ salaries and personal leave items.
Trustee Harold Laich said the most recent discussions led to tweaks to the bereavement and personal leave wordings, but for the most part, the existing contract was reconfirmed. The larger issues such as working conditions and wages are negotiated at the provincial level and adhere to almost all educators working in the Kindergarten to Grade 12 systems.
A request for a boundary change to accommodate one family who wished to send their children to a school in the neighbouring Prairie South School Division, was denied by the board members. An earlier request to have a Prairie South school bus come into the South East Cornerstone division to collect these same children, had also been denied.
Laich said he understood the request and the boundary change would have been about a five kilometre switch, but if similar circumstances cropped up, working the other way, what would Cornerstone come to expect?
“These items crop up again and again and if we set a precedent of making changes just to accommodate a few, where does it go?” he asked. “Where does it stop?”
Trustee Carol Flynn added that it was the same situation for the transportation requests, whether it was neighbouring school divisions wanting to send a bus into Cornerstone’s territory, or Cornerstone requesting permission to send a bus to pick up children in another school division.
“This could also put schools and school boards into some liability issues,” said trustee Elwood White, who proposed the motion to deny the request.
The board did accept a request for a used computer to be donated to the Torquay community library.
Lynn Little, Cornerstone’s director of education, then led a discussion on threat assessments and support protocol in the event of crisis situations and that included such things as early intervention action plans, violence prevention, high-risk assessments and intervention practices that could be deployed to alleviate threatening situations.
She noted this was a multi-discipline action plan that involved police services, social services, addictions counselors, the partnerships of Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division and the Sun Country Health Region among others.
A presentation from the Canadian Centre for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response will help the division “evaluate risk and share information with the necessary agencies,” said Little. “Everyone brings knowledge and expertise to the table.”
White asked if the RCMP was also involved, since they weren’t mentioned in the list of supporting agencies that included Estevan and Weyburn Police Services. He said he was concerned about proposed coverage for rural schools that might find themselves in a vulnerable situation.
Little said the RCMP would become a part of the team and had been involved in the planning, but it was taking a little more time for them to make it official due to the fact they were a federal agency and their timeline for signing on was lengthy compared with the others.
“Violence prevention in our schools is a shared responsibility,” said Little, who noted there was a systematic approach to these issues put in writing since 2006, but they were being refined and defined in more detail. “We are more able to identify supports needed and when they’re needed,” she said.
“It appears to be proactive as well as reactive,” said Laich.
“That’s right,” said Little.
“Does that mean any of these partners can initiate action?” he asked.
Little responded “yes”, and then added there were a couple of levels of training to go along with the program’s implementation and that involved training to look for signs of encroaching problems and a second level that involved intervention procedures.
