The South East Cornerstone Public School Division trustees spent some time on May 17 discussing the timing of notices that could be sent out to all the division's school community councils.
The public board of education wants to ensure that the communities associated with all 38 schools in the division are aware of the school review process so that communities will no longer arrive at the boardroom tables in October or November claiming they were caught unaware of the fact that their school was under review for possible closure or changes.
"We don't have schools listed yet, we're just wanting to outline policy and parameters," said chairwoman Carol Flynn.
Some trustees felt it would be a good idea to send out the information notices regarding review policies immediately while others felt the notifications would be lost in the school year-end shuffles and would lose their impact over the coming summer months.
But some trustees felt that issuing the notices in mid-September in the new school year would once again lead to accusations of the board not giving a community any lead time in which to mount a defence for their school.
Trustee Harold Laich said he felt the board needed to discuss in more detail "what makes a school viable or not," other than enrolment decreases.
It was finally decided that a letter explaining the school review process will be sent to the principal in each of the schools and it will be their responsibility to bring it to their respective school community councils in a timely manner.
The notices and review process will be sent to each and every school, regardless of its size and current status within the division.
In other business, the trustees approved a motion to award the tender for the construction and placement of two relocatable classrooms in the division.
One classroom is being added to MacLeod Elementary School in Moosomin while the other is being added to Arcola School.
The $858,751 contract was awarded to CCR Construction Ltd. of Regina which was the lowest of four bids received for work.
April Lawrence, the board's communications and media manager provided an update on the division's website activities including unique visitors. She reported that the visitor list is up by 25 per cent compared with last year. She noted that of the Google visitors to the Cornerstone website, 98 per cent were from Canada.
Lawrence also noted that as well as hundreds of internal communication items, there were seven board highlight packages sent out to media outlets in the division and 434 newspaper articles and radio station reports focused on Cornerstone activities and there had been five other non-board press releases issued during the past academic year plus 23 media interviews.
