On October 7, a group of students from North Addington Education Centre travelled to Kingston to visit the Kingston Glass Studio. Students took it in turns to try their hands at glass blowing, in order to make a spherical ornament. Each student chose the colours and style of their ornament, and blew it into a spherical shape with the help of the professional glass blowers at the studio.

“It was great to make your own glass ball, but it was just as much fun to watch your peers doing it,” said Emma Fuller, a grade 12 student. Students had to wait several days for the ornaments to cool enough to be transported, and were delighted with the results. This trip was in preparation for a trip on October 27 to the Dale Chihuly exhibition at the ROM in Toronto.

Grade 7 to 12 students at NAEC have also been having fun with a ball. They have been using inflatable bubble balls in a variety of activities. These balls were rented from Skyza, a new company from Pembroke. The balls are very large, with shoulder straps to keep them in place and keep the players’ heads protected.

Students have played Bubble Soccer, Sumo Wrestling, Last Man Standing, and King of the Hill. The great advantage to using the bubble balls is that students are protected from injury when making contact. It is also good exercise, because speed is not as hazardous. In addition, students spend a lot of energy manoeuvring while playing Bubble Soccer.

Amber Verbruggen, Grade 7, said, “It made you feel like you were on a roller-coaster.” Noah Gray, from Grade 8, observed, “It was fun because we got to “crush” people without getting in trouble!”

On Sept. 22, members of the Granite Ridge Education Centre Parents’ Council joined with administrative staff at the school to celebrate the end of a successful fundraising campaign. The parents’ council made a commitment to raise $22,000 to go along with an $11,000 commitment from the Limestone Board for an electronic sign at the front of the school.

It took 26 months to raise the money. Parents’ council members raised money at their Ladies’ Night events, through tea and coffee sales, Nevada funds, and through their share of proceeds from the annual Polar Plunge at the Frontenac Heritage Festival.

The sign provides a public face for the school and informs the school and local communities about upcoming events.

Peter Mouncey has taken over the role as school principal at Prince Charles Public School in Verona for the 2016-2017 school year.

“I truly believe in education, particularly public education, as something that can be transformative,” he says. “It can change individual lives; it can change communities and when we do a good job with our schools then I think we’re doing a good job with our society.”

Mouncey has been with the Limestone District School Board since 2000. He got his first position as a vice-principal and has not slowed down since. He has worked at seven different schools since starting with the board. Before Prince Charles he was at First Avenue, Marysville, Holsgrove, Selby, Westdale Park, Southview and Winston Churchill.

Mouncey says that growing up he was always drawn to teaching. Whether it was as a leader at cub scouts, camp counselor, Sunday school teacher or tutor, he has always had a love for leadership.

“Anything that a teenager could do that was directed towards working with children I just gravitated to naturally,” he says. “I really can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.”

After graduating from the Queen’s University Concurrent Education program, Mouncey got his first teaching job working at an international school with his wife Sharon Isbell in Hong Kong. It was there that he and Isbell got married.

The two of them stayed in Hong Kong for two years before moving back to Canada to start teaching in Eastern Ontario.

The Cobourg native got his first taste of Verona in the summer of 1977 while playing in a baseball tournament. After getting a co-op with an outdoor and experiential education program in his final year of teachers’ college, Mouncey returned to Frontenac and really started to fall in love with the area.

He and his family made the move to the Kingston area in the summer of 2000 and have been here ever since. Now with three children, the couple spends their time racing from work to hockey arenas and dance studios.

Mouncey says that he was very pleased to get the position in the Verona area. He says that the students and parent community at the school have been incredibly welcoming of him. He has loved his time at Prince Charles so far and is looking forward to a great school year.

“I can’t emphasize enough how well this first month has gone,” says Mouncey. “I truly have felt very welcomed and supported. There are folks in Verona and the surrounding area who really do value and support their school and I’d like to thank everybody for how things have gone so far.”

On September 29, North Addington Education Centre students participated in the annual Terry Fox Run. North Addington has been doing the run for over 25 years and every year the students are excited about the run. The elementary students learned about Terry Fox and his journey before the run took place and started fundraising. The kick-off assembly last week made the students enthusiastic about participating. Terry Fox ran for everyone and his goal was to raise one dollar for every Canadian; since then Canadians have raised over $700,000,000!

Everyone in the school participated, including the kindergarten classes. Maci, a kindergarten student said “I ran for Terry Fox and I want to do it again.”

Cole Delyea, a grade 4 student said, “I want to do it again next year, I ran for a friend's grandpa...” His sister, Sierra said, “I ran for Terry Fox and I’ll try to run more next year.”

North Addington students will find out how much they raised next week. Until then, the school is very proud of their accomplishment and the students are eager to run again next year.

As a group of parents sat quietly in the small gallery, wearing “I Love Yarker School” buttons, members of the Board of Trustees for the Limestone District School Board (LDSB) listened as the fate of the small Kindergarten to Grade 3 school was discussed at a committee meeting last Wednesday, September 28.

Ruth Bailey, Pupil Accommodation Review Facilitator for the LDSB, outlined the issues that led to the establishment of a Pupil Accommodation Review (PAR) for Yarker Family School.

Bailey noted that the Yarker school is the only Kindergarten to Grade 3 school in the board, making it “difficult to maintain a suitable program.” She also said, “Enrolment at Yarker school this year is 26 students, which is below our projections, and 50% of the students that live within the school's boundaries are choosing to go elsewhere ... We feel it is in the best interests of the Yarker students to be served at the Odessa Public School.”

Trustee Suzanne Ruttan, from South Frontenac, pointed out that there would be ample opportunity for the public, the township, and the school community to provide information to the PAR, and that “another staff report will come forward to the board once all that information is received.”

The Limestone Board has undertaken similar reviews in the past to deal with closing or constructing schools. A committee facilitated by board staff, including school staff and community members, was presented with all pertinent information and met over time to come up with a proposal, which may or may not have included closing schools.

However, under new directives from the Ontario Ministry of Education, school board staff are now required to provide a recommended outcome for the process even before the PAR Committee is formed to look at possible solutions to identified issues.

In the case of Yarker, board staff are recommending that the Yarker school be closed at the end of the 2016/17 school year and that students be re-directed to the elementary school in Odessa.

The PAR process for the Yarker school is the first to have been initiated since the board received a Long Term Accommodation Plan (LTAP) from the Ameresco Asset Sustanainability Group on May 24 of this year.

Although the LTAP was only “received for information purposes” in May, the first recommendation in its timeline, “establish a PAR in 2016/17 involving Yarker FS and Odessa PS, with a view to close Yarker FS and redirect pupils to Odessa PS”, has now been adopted by the board.

The LTAP also recommends that the board consider “the consolidation of students at Marysville Public School [on Wolfe Island] with students from the Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic District School Board (ALCDSB) on one site on the island.”

That proposal was also endorsed by the board committee last Wednesday and board staff will pursue the matter with staff at the ALCDSB.

The Yarker PAR and the Marysville consolidation proposals will be ratified at an LDSB board meeting on October 9.

The Yarker and Wolfe Island decisions are being watched by residents and politicians in Frontenac County, because [discussions about] the future of schools in the county are set to take place as well, starting in three years.

The Ameresco Long Term Accommodation Plan implementation timeline calls for schools in South Frontenac to be reviewed in 2019/2020 and schools in Central and North Frontenac to be reviewed in 2023/2024.

The LTAP earmarks closing schools in Glenburnie and Verona as part of the South Frontenac accommodation review.

However, the LTAP is also set to be updated in 2018/2019 and at that time enrolment projections may change based on the 2016 census results.

The current version of the LTAP report is based on enrolment projections that were prepared by Baragers Systems from a variety of data sets, including enrolment figures in the Limestone Board from 2000 – 2015, the 2011 census, and immigration and demographic data.

“2016 census taking will be mandatory once again – it is important to assess changes in pre-school & 65+ age cohorts post release of census data” according to Barager Systems.

The entire long term accommodation process is being undertaken by the Limestone Board under the backdrop of a new Ministry of Education policy initiative that may require that schools throughout the province operate at 100% capacity. This means that for every school in the board that has fewer than the number of students it was built to accommodate, another school needs to be over full.

“Achieving close to 100% utilization year-over-year will require some schools at capacity greater than 100% to offset school populations that can never achieve 100% - that is, some students in portables,” according to the Ameresco Long Term Accommodation Plan for the Limestone Board.

Debra Rantz found herself in a bit of a difficult position last week. She has been in her role as director of education for the Limestone District School Board for just over a year, but before that she spent over two years as the chief assessment officer for the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).

At a committee meeting at the board office last week she introduced an information session on the latest set of EQAO results for students in the Limestone Board, based on testing that took place last spring.

In just about every category the percentage of Limestone students who achieved the provincial standard has dropped. This was true of Grade 3 and 6 students taking standardized tests in reading comprehension, writing, and mathematics; for Grade 9 students taking a standardized test in math; and Grade 10 students taking the mandatory literacy test.

Limestone is not alone since results across the province dropped as well, at about the same rate as they did in Limestone.

Unfortunately, as in past years, students in the Limestone Board are also less likely to be at or about the provincial standards than those in the province as a whole, by a persistently wide margin.

In the latest set of results, 62% of Grade 3 students at the LDSB achieved the standard in reading (compared to 72% provincially); 64% achieved the standard in writing (compared to 74% provincially); and 50% achieved the standard in math (compared to 63% provincially).

Among grade 6 students, 73% achieved the standard in reading (compared to 81% provincially); 57% in writing (compared to 80%); and 34% in math (50% provincially).

In Grade 9 math results, 77% of LDSB students in the academic stream achieved the standard (83% provincially); and 41% in the applied stream achieved the standard (45% provincially).

In the Grade 10 Literacy test, 73% of LDSB students passed (75% is the provincial average).

“I would say from our conversations with our leadership team we were not that surprised by the results. We are a little surprised by the literacy results, but I have to caution everyone that one year does not make a trend. I also need to tell you that if the results were better we would not be popping the champagne corks ... we have said always in Limestone that we want all of our students to participate and we look for the positive stories in the midst of what you might look at as a difficult story,” she said.

Krishan Burra, program superintendent with the LDSB, prepared a slide show that provided detailed context for the results, but before turning to him, Director Rantz made another comment about the meaning of the results, particularly the poor math results.

“When results like these come in there are always calls for back to basics. As a former EQAO employee, the students are demonstrating to us on EQAO that they know their times tables, but they do not know when to apply those skills. That flags for me that our students need to develop stronger understanding. I really feel passionate about that. There is a place for knowing our times table, but they need to go hand in hand with the thinking and our understanding,” she said

In a series of slides, Krishna Burra provided some context for the gap between the LDSB and the provincial average.

He pointed out that the percentage of boys to girls in the board is 52% to 48%, the provincially that ratio is 51% to 49%.

“We also know that girls tend to do better in standardized tests,” he said.

More tellingly, while 17% of students are designated as special needs across the province, 27% of LDSB students have the designation.

“While our special needs students do better than the provincial average for special needs students, they still lag behind students without special needs,” he said, which would lower the overall scores in the LDSB.

Even as far as the Grade 10 literacy test is concerned, there are interesting factors that Burra mentioned.

“Limestone encourages all students to take the test. Of our special needs students, 93% take the test and the provincial average is 85%. While 49% of our special needs students passed the test and the provincial average is 44%, it still affects our overall average,” he said.

Burra added that the board takes the position, and there is data to show it is a sound policy, that “students should be encouraged to succeed, even if they have not succeeded in the past.”

An example of this can be found in the Grade 9 math results. Students entering secondary school have the option of taking the academic or the applied stream in math.

A healthy percentage of students who do not achieve the standard in Grade 6 but nonetheless enter the academic stream, achieve the standard in Grade 9. A much lower percentage of those who opt for the applied stream.

“It is possible to succeed, and creating the expectation of success is one way to promote improvement,” he said.

Two hundred and fifty-six students, or 45%, who did not meet the provincial math standard in Grade 6, rose to the standard in Grade 9, and most of those were in the academic stream

A number of students in the LDSB have also been able to bring their writing levels up between testing in Grade 6 and the Grade 10 literacy test.

“In Limestone, 47%, or 156 students, who did not achieve the provincial writing standard in Grade 6, met the standard in Grade 10,” said a release from the board announcing the EQAO results.

The release, entitled “Previously unsuccessful students meet provincial standards in EQAO assessments” emphasized these successes while acknowledging that “results for the Limestone District School Board indicate there has been a drop in achievement across all levels.”

On September 26, Land O' Lakes Public School hosted its 10th annual Timber Wolf Run. North Addington & Granite Ridge Education Centres, as well as Prince Charles and Clarendon Central Public Schools sent students from grades 1 to 8 to participate with the Land O' Lakes students.

Jen Meulenaar, the Grade 1/2 teacher and running coach for Land O' Lakes Public School, organizes the Timber Wolf Run along with the help of staff, volunteer parents and former students. “This is a great chance to get the northern schools and southern schools together to have some fun and get some exercise,” Meulenaar said. “The kids always enjoy it.” This year, the students of Land O' Lakes also learned about Terry Fox and raised $84 for the Terry Fox Foundation.

In preparation for the Fort Henry Regional Meet next Thursday, students from grades 1 and 2 ran 1km; grades 3 and 4 ran 2km; and grades 5 through 8 ran 3km (distances approximate) up and over the hills behind the school.

The results were:

GRADE 1/2 Girls: 1. Savanna Rose PCPS; 2. Lexie McCullough GREC; 3. Poppy Miller PCPS

GRADE 1/2 Boys: 1. Jackson Mosher LOLPS; 2. Parker Beeg CCPS; 3. Talan Stubinski PCPS

GRADE 3/4. Girls: 1. Chloe Saunders LOLPS; 2. Natsuki Ono LOLPS; 3. Cassie Tryon LOLPS

GRADE 3/4 Boys: 1. Logan Chiasson GREC; 2. Ryder Mallett LOLPS; 3. Drake Thomas PCPS

GRADE 5/6 – Girls: 1. Rylee Beattie GREC; 2. Julia Cuddy NAEC; 3. Alexus Wagner NAEC

GRADE 5/6 Boys: 1. Vann Thomas PCPS; 2. Lincoln Elliotte PCPS; 3. Josh Rowe PCPS

GRADE 7/8 Girls: 1. Lexus Cochrane PCPS; 2. Heidi Riddell LOLPS; 3. Katie Tryon LOLPS

GRADE 7/8 Boys: 1. Braydon Dunham GREC; 2. Mason MacDonald PCPS; 3. Gregory Ross CCPS

On September 12, North Addington Education Centre had the honour to hear motivational speaker, Nick Foley, of Move for Inclusion (MFI), who spoke about his experiences and taught NAEC many valuable lessons. MFI is an organization that promotes inclusion of others and acceptance. MFI started in 2012, four days after Nick’s daughter was born. The students at NAEC listened to Nick and gained an insight of how important it is to include others and accept them for who they are. Recently, Nick went across Canada (Victoria, B.C to St. John’s, N.F) on a bicycle to raise awareness and promote physical activity. He emphasized that it is important to be a good person not just for others but for yourself.

Students at NAEC said that Nick Foley was an inspiration for them to get active and to accept people for who they are. Emma Grand, a Grade 12 student stated, “Nick’s presentation was very inspiring and really helped me learn to accept people.”

Tyson Johnson in Grade 9 said, “Nick Foley’s life lessons were inspirational. I really liked the bullying awareness stories.”

Nick wanted to leave NAEC with a very important message, “Celebrate acceptance without bias, and be inclusive to everyone.”

For more information on Move for Inclusion check out the website: http://moveforinclusion.com

The recent Long Term Sustainability Plan (LTAP) presented to the board of directors of the Limestone District School Board in late May, recommended that Prince Charles Public School in Verona be closed and the students be sent to Loughborough Public School in Sydenham.

What a difference a decade makes.

Nine years ago, Glen Carson, who was at that time the manager of the Limestone Board's Facility Department, came to a meeting of the Prince Charles' Parent Council and said, as reported in the Frontenac News in April of 2007 by the late Inie Platenius, “I’m pleased to come here tonight. This is a good news item, and too often I go to these meetings with bad news.”

The good news he delivered was that because the Ministry of Education had determined that Prince Charles was old and needed extensive repairs to reach an acceptable standard, the ministry was going to fund the building of a new school in Verona.

Among schools in the Limestone Board, Prince Charles was at the top of the list of “schools that will be replaced.”

Carson pointed at the end of the meeting that “the process is just beginning, though, so don’t look for a new building for at least three years.”

Three years passed, and another three, and another three, and the school is still old, but the talk is now only about shutting it down.

One of the odd things about the recommendation in the recent LTAP report is that it proposed to merge two non-neighboring schools. Were the consultants who wrote the report unaware that in order to bus students from Verona to Sydenham, they have to pass through Harrowsmith, which has a school?

Program Accommodation Reviews (PARs) are the processes that the Limestone Board uses to close, rebuild, and consolidate schools. If one comes about in South Frontenac as the result of the LTAP report, it will have to look at all three of the schools and come up with a reasonable plan. Harrowsmith Public School is an old school, as is Prince Charles, so eventually at least one one of them will need to be replaced and upgraded. An argument can be made, based on geography, that a new school in Verona makes the most sense.

It also makes the most sense from a community and economic development point of view because Verona is the strongest retail hub in the township, and losing a school would damage that.

The problem with any kind of talk about closing schools is that it divides communities, and I am sure families whose children attend that school will not be happy to see any talk of its closing, even in a speculative column such as this one.

However, the LTAP to the Limestone Board, even if it has only been accepted for information, is a policy document that will form the basis of decision-making within the next few months, and while the demographic projections and the global costings in the report may be accurate, the recommendations are based on speculation.

A glaring example of this can be found in an un-related section of the report, the section about North Addington Education Centre in Cloyne. In order to deal with projected enrollment decreases at NAEC, the report urges the school board approach the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care about turning part of NAEC into a long-term care facility.

First off, there would be no way to accurately budget for the cost of renovating a 45-year-old school to turn it into a long-term care facility that complies with modern rules and requirements. Second, there is already a long-term care facility, Pine Meadow Nursing Home, in nearby Northbrook. The recommendation about NAEC has no basis in fact; it is mere words on a page.

The same can be said of the recommendation to pull the school from Verona. It reveals not only that the consultants did not visit the area to see what it really is like; they may not even have looked too closely at a map.

North Addington Education Centre has been certified as an Ontario EcoSchool for the eighth year in a row. NAEC has received Silver certification for 2015-2016.

North Addington Education Centre recently applied for EcoSchool certification. EcoSchools is an environmental education program in Ontario that helps students and schools to become more environmentally friendly. To become a certified EcoSchool the school must show achievement in leadership, energy conservation, waste minimization, ecological literacy, curriculum and school ground greening.

NAEC showed their commitment to the environment throughout the 2015-2016 school year through events such as National Sweater Day, Earth Hour and Earth Day.

“I am so proud of our students. It takes a lot of hard work over a long period of time to earn certification. This type of commitment to the school, the community and the environment is fantastic. Thank you to Ms. Randle and her hard-working team,” said Angela Salmond, principal at NAEC.

EcoSchools is a voluntary program led by teachers and volunteers at schools across Ontario.