Kelly Hilkewich, deputy director of education for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division, updated the board of trustees on the progress being made on the division’s Safe and Caring Schools Comiittee. The presentation was made during the board’s general monthly business session on June 18.
Hilkewich addressed topics such as bullying and cyber-bullying as it relates to the parameters of the schools. He said the objective is to ensure students are safe within the school environment and outlined the support systems given to the schools that enable them to provide that environment.
There is a policy on bullying including administration procedures within the Safe School Charter, which is a provincial document. There are also handbooks, brochures and website references to approach for reporting on site bullying and other infractions.
“If it affects their schooling, we provide support,” said Hilkewich, noting the extent of the support offered.
Board chairwoman Audrey Trombley asked about bullying involving people from outside the local school systems, or the division itself.
Lynn Little, the director of education for Cornerstone, said police and other agencies then get involved and the other school division and school is contacted (if applicable).
“We act on it,” said Hilkewich. “And we lend support for both the bullied and the bully as well as bystanders (on site or cyber) to help them understand implications.”
Weyburn trustee Warren Betker asked about legal precedents for schools if they start to take action outside the school division. He posed an example of a bullying incident that might occur on a weekend, and then asked, “what do we do on Monday?”
Newly elected Weyburn trustee Dana Pretzer, a retired police sergeant, noted that, “in our experience, the police get involved.”
Hilkewich added there has to be a clear definition of bullying since a simple playground conflict might often be seen by some, especially children, as instances of bullying, when, in reality, it isn’t.
“Bullying is repeated and intentional. School conflicts are usually brief and one-off incidents,” Hilkewich said. “But incidents need to be recorded, whether they involve bullying or not. Our school support teams meet weekly to discuss academic, as well as, behaviour incidents and cases that require support.”
Awareness and communication are the keys, the deputy director suggested and administration needs to know what supports are in place.
The school community councils play an important role, he said, and each school has a safety template built and tweaked to accommodate their particular facility’s needs. The school administration and SCCs will review it yearly.
Hilkewich said all players needed to know what to do in the case of any emergency and what the roles of the parents and guardians are. The SCCs’ improvement plans are a big part of the safe and caring school charters, he added.
Discipline procedures are also spelled out in the policy along with violent threat risk assessments, drug policy, child abuse and neglect incidents, student leadership issues, general sexual identity and partnerships with other agencies.
Later in the meeting, Little led the trustees through a series of administrative procedure changes that included the four-year education plan, annual reports, school improvements and planning, the use of data, instructional programs, assessments and reporting, student progress and service dogs, to name a few.
In most instances, she noted, the changes merely required some language changes or corrections.
There was also a report on accommodating adults returning to schools and the addition of foreign students in mid-stream.
Marilyn Yurkiw, manager of finance, provided the quarterly financial report that indicated the division was on track for the 2014-15 fiscal year, having expended 74 per cent of the budget to that date. Total revenues for the year are projected to be 1.9 per cent higher than budgeted while expenses are expected to be 1.3 per cent over budget.
The board also welcomed the new board member, Pretzer to the table. Pretzer won the local byelection in Weyburn by the luck of the draw after he and another candidate Brandon Tichkowsky received 27 votes each from that city’s electorate. That meant a draw was made to declare a winner and Pretzer’s name emerged. Pretzer, the retired police sergeant, was a member of the former Sunrise and Weyburn School Divisions prior to the amalgamation of southeast Saskatchewan school districts about 11 years ago.
