School Board briefs
Yk1 district eyes new emergency plans for schools in the region
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Friday, December 18, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Educators are looking at revising emergency protocols for territorial schools.
At the Yellowknife Education District No. 1 school board meeting on Dec. 8, assistant superintendent Ed Lippert said he recently attended a training workshop put on by Hour-Zero - a company that develops emergency response protocols for schools across western Canada and the U.S.
In the workshop, participants were split into fictitious "district teams" to work through case studies and disaster scenarios.
Superintendent Metro Huculak said he knows the company's founder and is soliciting help in revising current emergency protocols.
The long-term goal, said Huculak, is to develop protocols for all schools in the NWT.
Culture in classrooms
Yk1 staff met recently to discuss including more conversations about the territory's indigenous cultures in classrooms.
Ed Lippert, assistant superintendent for Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (Yk1), said at the Dec. 8 school board meeting that he met with Yk1 aboriginal education staff including co-ordinator Scott Willoughby to talk about the Dene Kede program which is a curriculum focused on Dene culture.
The school board must deliver Dene Kede by law, Lippert said, but it is looking for ways to include other NWT cultures represented in the student population including Inuit and Metis.
Yk1 watches Quebec debate
An argument in Quebec over whether school board trustees should be elected or appointed came up during a recent meeting of the Alberta School Board Association with a Yellowknife Education District No. 1 trustee present.
At the Yk1 school board meeting on Dec. 8, Rajiv Rawat said he attended the meeting on behalf of the board and sat in on a discussion about a continuing argument in Quebec between francophone and anglophone parent groups divided over whether trustees should be appointed - the French position - or elected - the English position.
Rawat said the discussion hasn't come up in Yellowknife but the issue is percolating across the country.
