Questions from a voter

What will you do to support the continued vibrancy of the French Immersion Program in HRSB?

I will continue to support all French immersion programs currently offered within the Halifax Regional School Board.

I will work to create a policy that will ensure that if the need arises, late French immersion classes will be created for those schools that are currently without a French program.

I will implement a plan to ensure that there are sufficient French immersion class choices offered at the high school level.

What will you do to lead and ensure HRSB supports and expands the objectives of health promoting schools?

I completely support the province policy (http://www.ednet.ns.ca/healthy_eating/) on food and nutrition in Nova Scotia schools. I will make sure that the Halifax Regional School Board fully implements the policy. If a funding shortfall arises, I’ll recommend that we commit funds from the Board’s surplus to the program.

What will you do to ensure that we are educating to build and create democratic citizens? What will you do to ensure you are building a consensus within the district and representing our long term interests?

I’d like to encourage more public involvement with the Halifax Regional School Board. One way this could be done is to emulate how Halifax Regional Municipality Council committees are organized and invite the general public to serve on Halifax Regional School Board committees.

In creating a consensus, it’s important that all parties involved are at the decision making table. For example, we currently need to come to a consensus over dealing with aging schools and small schools in Halifax and Dartmouth. The community wants small neighborhood schools and the Department of Education wants to be financially prudent and build larger schools. I’d like to see representatives from the community and representatives from the Department of Education, get together and agree to a plan that works for everyone.

What are your top three priorities?

Make math and literacy a priority

For the last four years, students in the Halifax Regional School Board have made gains in their performance in literacy and mathematics. This is good news but there is room in improvement.

I will commit to do the following:

• Work with the Department of Education to look into the methods of testing for effectiveness.

• Push for reduced class sizes and more classroom time.

• Make sure students get adequate textbooks and other learning aids.

• Make sure teachers have proper resources and tools.

One-year moratorium of school closure consideration

This year, Halifax Regional School Board is considering closing three schools in Dartmouth / Halifax: Alderney, Saint Mary's, and St. Patrick's-Alexandra. The newly elected school board should have the opportunity to vote and be given more time to consider schools for closure. With the extra time, the Halifax Regional School Board should have more public consultations in how to resolve our aging schools issue. I will urge board members to restart the process in 2009-2010 where we can consider building, consolidation, renovation, or closure of aging / end-of-life schools for the whole region.

French immersion

Create a new school-board policy, where if there a need for a new French immersion class in a community, we will create one. The policy will assist parents and students by spelling out the number of students needed to be signed up in a school area. The only reason a class will not be created is because of funding or availability teacher resources.