More than 950 parents would opt for a public traditional school in Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows
The results of the School Choice survey that the Board has asked staff to conduct this Fall are just in and the numbers are impressive. If anyone needed confirmation, you have it again. Almost 1000 parents would like Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows School District to offer a traditional school and over 500 are willing to drive more than 10 minutes to get to one. Many other interesting results, see it for yourself. The Board will discuss the survey at Wednesday’s public board meeting.

School closure meetings begin this week
School closure consultation meetings are set to begin this week, tonight at Riverside and Thursday at Mt Crescent. There will be much debate in the coming weeks about the reasons, options and numbers. As this process unfolds I intend to share my views and thoughts here on this blog. The School District website has a school closure page where the information relating to this process is posted and updated. There is also an archive of the documents presented to the board and the public during the last round in 2007:

School choice survey
The flurry of activity spurred last week by the announcements from the Ministry of Education on cancelation of various grants to school districts, school sports associations and parent advisory councils (see my earlier posts for all the details) has left me with little time to bring attention to Katherine Wagner’s latest column . Her piece was devoted entirely to the board’s initiative to survey parents and staff on the desire to see the creation of the new school options in the district. While there are times when I reject Katherine’s prescriptions, her observations are always precise and detailed –