When the new secretary-treasurer, Shezad Somji, joined the Sea to Sky School District last year, trustee Laura Godfrey said the board began looking at its policies to make any necessary revisions.
This means changes to formatting and ensuring the wording is up to date.
“All we’re doing is changing some language,” said Godfrey, who chairs the committee.
The previous year the prime target was the suspensions policy, but in 2016 the field trip policy was the one that needed an update.
Godfrey gave a brief report of the changes at the final board meeting of the year to outline some of the work.
Most of the changes had to do with wording around field trips, particularly when it comes to travelling for sports teams. This was problematic because some schools typically have a difficult time playing against schools outside the Sea to Sky area.
“We have very different communities and their needs are very different,” Godfrey told The Squamish Chief.
She said the policy affected a community like Pemberton especially hard, where many of the coaches are community-volunteers who work with teacher-sponsors. The wording had made it mandatory for school district staff to accompany teams, meaning a small number of teachers had to take part in every tournament or game.
“We needed to find a way to make it safe for our students and make it equitable for our students,” she said.
The changes should now make it easier for them to play outside the region, Godfrey added.
A related issue that came up with the committee was the wording around sanctioned versus unsanctioned events, specifically dry grad.
A group from this year’s grad committee at Howe Sound Secondary approached the district in the fall with questions about dry grad as a sanctioned event.
Godfrey pointed out the district differentiates between prohibited and restricted activities, with the former being not allowed and the latter being permitted assuming certain conditions have been met.
“The dry grad is based on the guidelines and the expectations that have now been written in for a field trip,” she said. “Dry grad would fall into that if it was sanctioned.”
If an event is non-sanctioned, there are still conditions such as code of conduct.
A sanctioned event like dry grad, though, must also include provisions such as ratios for adult supervision. There is also a long form that must be filled out, as any problems that arise could become district liability for insurance.
In the last couple of years, students from Howe Sound have been put on buses and taken to events at places like the West Coast Railway Heritage Park or Quest University.
“There’s usually a bus component, so it has to be under the field trip policy,” Godfrey said.
A sanctioned event also allows the graduation committee, including parents, to have access to the school email system for sending out notices for fundraisers or other information.
Dry grad has been sanctioned, though in the field trip policy it states that the event is not sanctioned, which Godfrey said has caused some confusion for parents, especially as each year there is a new group of parents on the graduation committee.
“We almost have to tell the whole story all over again each time when there’s a new grad,” she said.
