Peace Arch Elementary parents

This web blog is for all parents and was originally created for the parents of Peace Arch Elementary School. In recent months we have seen a number of parents visiting this site from several countries around the world and perhaps parents from other school districts can share their experiences, thoughts and comments to help us all make our schools a healthier and better place for all our children.

Thank you for taking the time to visit, contribute and share your ideas and comments. ~~~~~~~

Over the last few months we have had so many serious health issues that pertain to our school which directly affect the health of our children.

This web blog has been put up to provide a central place for all parents to turn to, to leave comments, ask questions and communicate.

As parents it is important for us to be able to stick together and protect our kids as best we can. Let's make our children's school as healthy as possible by voicing our concerns and our recommendations and hopefully our strength in words and numbers will lead to a healthier school for our kids.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Parents who want a meeting

Below is a copy of an email sent to many people within the school district and has been posted here with permission.  We want a meeting.  If you do to, post your comments below and we'll send this link to the district so that they can actually see how many parents want a meeting. 

I am also a concerned parent who has spoken with both Bernadine (School District) over the summer (who was more than willing to come and meet with the parents and bring a rep from Worksafe BC and Pacific Environmental) and with Ms. Brine.  My last conversation with Ms. Brine was that she was leaning towards not having a parent meeting - that she felt that there was no new information to provide to the parents - given that the information is up on the site.

While there may be information up on the website, this is not what the parents are asking for. We want to have a conversation/dialogue and have our questions answered. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent woman, but having all this information up on a website is not the means for me to make sense of the issues and determine the safety for my children.   Having a conversation and hearing directly from a Worksafe representative will make me feel more comfortable than what I have had access to at this point.  Unfortunately given the lack of communication over the summer months, many parents are mistrustful of the process and decision-making that occurred and consider that the School District and the School Administration have not been fully transparent with us. 

I do a lot of work with senior leaders in healthcare (Fraser Health being one of my clients).  I have seen the positive impact of bringing stakeholders together to have conversation and surface issues as well as the negative impact where these steps have not been taken. In fact, from my experience, if the space is not created for these types of conversations, it fosters resentment, story-making and it goes underground, feeding antagonistic behaviours.

I would assert that creating the meeting for Peace Arch Elementary parents would do a great deal of good in terms of contributing to collaborative relationships between the parents and the Administration rather than setting it up to become potentially adversarial. 

My recommendation is to have a facilitator who facilitates the process and therefore can manage the dynamics that could surface in the group. I would be happy to recommend two people that I know of who are skilled facilitators and reside in South Surrey.

I would strongly encourage you to proceed with an all parent meeting as Stacy MacDonald has requested in a previous email to all of you. Again I would be more than happy to provide contact information for facilitators for you. My contact information is below.

Sincerely,

Erica Groschler





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