Dear Parents/Guardians:
I hope your summer has been enjoyable. I wanted to take a moment to update you on the current labour dispute between the BC Teachers Federation and the BC Public Employers Association. Please review the attached letter from our Superintendent, Tom Grant. As you may have heard through the media, there have been a few meetings between the BCTF and BCPSEA this summer, but talks have not progressed enough to achieve a settlement. Of course, we are all hoping that negotiations will occur next week around the clock so that a settlement will be reached prior to September 2nd. If this does not occur, we are likely in a continuation of the strike that ended the last school year in which teachers will not be in schools and therefore classes will not be running.
This dispute makes things challenging for our start-up as we typically run EAL testing, counsellor appointments, and the grade 9 orientation during the week of August 25-29. Given the current labour dispute, we will not have any teachers/counsellors in the building during the week of August 25-29 and as a result, all activities scheduled for that week will be postponed until the labour dispute is over and all staff are back in the building. This means, there will not be any EAL testing, counsellor appointments, or grade 9 orientation during the week of August 25-29. New student registration will continue in the office by administration and our office staff.
- EAL testing will occur by Ms. Yamamoto once teachers are back in session.
- Counsellor appointments for course changes will reconvene when teachers are back in session. If your child currently has an appointment with a counsellor, we will hold that time slot, and adjust the date once we reconvene. So, appointments will continue in the order that we received them. Counsellors also intend to readjust their days to accommodate later appointments once teachers are back so that we can expedite course changes and new registrations.
- The grade 9 orientation will occur in a modified format once we are back in session so that we can ensure students know where to find their locker, classes, and access our network with their devices.
We will email you as soon as we know that the dispute is over and all these events will reconvene. At this point, it does look like our start-up will have a different feel than normal, but we will do our very best to get all students into their regular routines as soon as we are back in session. Please also visit our school web-site for updates at http://www.sd43.bc.ca/secondary/riverside/Pages/default.aspx.
Take care.
Anthony Ciolfitto
Principal
