Good morning LKS Families.
Hope all of you are well.
As we finally had to deal with some inclement weather to start the day, just a quick note to let you know that in most cases we will begin entry five minutes earlier (8:25 a.m.) and will do our Student Health Screening inside the school as the students enter the classroom. Thank you in advance for your cooperation as we move forward.
A few items to share this morning.
1. Parent Council
Hello everyone,
As you saw in the last Parent Council Bulletin, we are planning to host our first meeting over zoom on Monday October 19th at 7:00pm.
As is the case every year, the first meeting involves choosing our official Parent Council (those with voting rights) and then choosing the Executive.
In the past, this has been done in a casual manner in the Library, where parents fill out a form and then decide whether they’d like to be a voting member; however, this is more complicated this year as a result of conducting the meeting over Zoom.
So, we are asking you to take a few minutes to read the information below and then decide if you’d like to become a voting member of Parent Council before the meeting so that we’ll be ready to go on October 19th.
Q: What does it mean to be a PC voting member??
A: Firstly, every parent/guardian at LKS is welcome to attend a PC meeting without being a voting member. But, those who are voting members have the opportunity to vote on issues that are proposed by the Executive members or other Parent Council members. Issues might include fundraising events, community outreach programs or new initiatives proposed by other parents. If you are not a voting member, you will not be able to officially vote on matters connected to Parent Council.
Q: What is the level of commitment of a voting member?
A: The most basic commitment is that we ask that you attend as many PC meetings as you can. Our by-laws state that we must hold at least four meetings per school year and that is our plan; however, we might add an extra meeting if we feel there is additional information to discuss. The first meeting will be held on October 19th, but we have not yet confirmed for the rest of the year. In addition, there are a number of committees at LKS that are led by Council members with voting rights. Those include, the fundraising committee, parent engagement committee and literacy, to name a few. You are not required to lead or join a committee, but if you decide that you’d like to lead a committee, we ask that you become a voting member.
Q: How many voting members do you require?
A: Last year we acquired 19 voting members and that is our goal for this year’s school year. In order to achieve quorum, we must have 50%+1 voting members present at a meeting. Otherwise we will not be able to pass meeting minutes and decide on other issues. So, for example, if we have 19 voting members, we would need 10 or more present at each meeting.
Q: I would like to become a voting member of Parent Council! How do I sign up?
A: Fantastic! We would love to have you. Please click on this link to complete the form. The deadline to register is: Thursday October 15th at 8:00pm
https://forms.gle/qvAFcpKWq7jCFDDY9
2. TDSB Reorganization
Last evening a message was sent to all parents about the need to reorganize many of our elementary schools. We are status quo at LKS. This has been a year like no other where thousands of teachers have been pulled from schools and central positions to teach in the Virtual School or in the higher priority neighbourhoods. Further, many schools have been running without a full complement of teachers which has led to further issues. To date, we have been fortunate and thanks to our very healthy in-school enrolment have been able to proceed without any major disruption. While we don’t have official numbers, we are willing to bet we are inside the top 10 in terms of in-school enrolment across the entire system and will continue to advocate for our students and staff to make sure we have an adequate staffing number to serve our school. The next transition period for virtual/in-school will be in November.
3. Start of the Year Forms
Thank you to those of you that have reached out to inform us that you did not receive the start of the year forms sent out by the TDSB last week. At this time, we do not have access to them but once we do, we have the ability to resend to those that have not completed them. Hold tight for more information around this and thanks for your patience.
Thanks as always for your partnership and talk soon.
John and Kimm
LKS Parent Council 