Saskatoon Public School Board Meeting Recap
September 17, 2004
Saskatoon Public School Board meeting recap in under 5 minutes! What questions do you have?
September 17, 2004
Saskatoon Public School Board meeting recap in under 5 minutes! What questions do you have?
September 13, 2024
The Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation released their election platform for candidates yesterday.
I commit to advocate for and achieve the goals of restoring per-student funding, funding specialists to help with classroom complexity, and addressing violence in the classroom by having adequate learning supports in place for students, as well as listening to teachers when it comes to making a plan to deal with violence in the classroom.
The provincial election is October 28. Please vote for the candidate in your riding who supports properly funded public education!
School Board Trustees are elected as part of the civic election on November 13.
September 5, 2024
Please share this with your kids! We're on the third day of school and my kids haven't been placed in their classes yet. While this is hopefully resolved today, we should be looking forward to prevent it from happening again next year.
Saskatoon Public School Board meets on Tues., Sept. 17 at 6:30 pm in the board room at their office on 3rd Ave. N. These meetings are open to the public. If you want to speak at the meeting, the link to register is Speak at SPSB Meeting and you can speak virtually or in person. The meeting agenda isn't up yet, so this is a good opportunity to flood their inbox with requests to speak on this issue to get it on the agenda.
September 3, 2024
I knocked on doors in Forest Grove this morning. Residents are happy I talked with them, and their concerns include:
I'll be out doorknocking again in the rest of Ward 1, and I want to hear from you!
August 25, 2024
Good news, the Minister of Education's assistant offered to answer all of our budget questions! (Jeremy Cockrill is apparently too busy to meet with me, as expected.) My questions are below, drop yours in the youtube comments or my DM!
1. Education tax is collected by municipalities, with mill rates set by the provincial government. Could you please provide a year-by-year breakdown of the total education tax collected across all school boards for the 7 years prior to and 7 years following the change in tax collection and mill rate setting? How has the total amount collected differed between these periods?
2. Regarding tax allocation, does a resident’s selection of a public or separate school board directly determine the funding allocated to that specific school division, or are all revenues pooled together and distributed based on budget requests from each school board? Is the education tax managed in a dedicated account, or is it merged into the province’s general revenue alongside other tax sources?
3. What led to the decision to allocate public education tax revenue to fund Qualified Independent Schools? Why was the public education tax stream selected for this purpose instead of revenue from the separate or Francophone school boards? Since this shift, what is the total amount of funding allocated to Qualified Independent Schools, and have any other private schools received public funding? If so, please provide details.
4. Setting aside teacher salaries, what avenues are available for public school boards to secure funding specifically for educational resources such as physical textbooks, digital textbook access, paper, photocopying supplies, and digital devices to offset the scarcity of textbooks? For this question, please consider that educational resources are not the responsibility of teachers or students and that the Education Act prohibits soliciting funding from parents for these items.
5. What funding is available for curriculum refresh and how often is this done? Is the time between refreshes the same for all courses? If not, please provide details.
6. Question for Jeremy Cockrill: If you could make a really big mess with all the education budgets, with zero repercussions, zero responsibility, and zero accountability, what would you do?
August 22, 2024
There was some chatter over on reddit when I announced my candidacy with residents asking if I'd be publicly calling out the Education Ministry for the lack of public education funding over the years. I still believe that publicly calling out someone I'm supposed to be on civil negotiating terms with is a poor choice. The correct route is to work together to accomplish things, and that starts with having a civil conversation and trying to understand the other side's motivation. Please see the recording and transcript of my phone call to this effect below. If you're listening with the sound off, there is a couple seconds while the phone is ringing before the text starts.
August 19, 2024
I'm excited to announce that I'm running for Saskatoon Public School Board Trustee in Ward 1! My priorities are open communication, a safety first approach, and hearing from you about your concerns. Please follow me here so that we can connect on educational issues that are important to you. In the coming weeks I will be posting about things I've learned from attending school board meetings. I'm also open to presenting your concerns at upcoming school board meetings.