The Physical Education classes at North Addington Education Centre were on wheels last week.  Mrs. Sarah Sproule, a secondary physical education teacher, arranged for the unique opportunity by organizing the rental of 10 wheelchairs for classes to experience sports and life from a different perspective. Throughout the week, grade 8-12 students had a chance to play basketball, dodge ball and navigate through a variety of obstacle courses.

Outside of the gym, students attempted to maintain their regular activities within the school while using the chairs: "Getting a drink wasn't hard, it was impossible" said Sarah Connell.  "Navigating the hallways during break was difficult” noted Courtney Dacuk.  By the end of the week, the students had multiple blisters, sore arms and shoulders, along with a much clearer perspective on the challenges and successes of others.

A preliminary meeting will be held on Tuesday Night, November 24th, at 6:30 to talk about a planned educational tour of sunny Italy in March of 2011.

Claudio Gerebizza, who is an educational travel ambassador with Education First Tours will be on hand to talk about the itinerary of the five city, ten day trip to Rome, Florence, Venice, Assisi and Piza.

Among the tours’ highlights will be St. Peters Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Trevi Fountain, the Ufizi Gallery, the Roman Coliseum and more.

The tour is being organised on the Sharbot Lake end by teachers Erica Kresen and Randy McVety, who have already been working out some of the logistics of the trip and planning fundraising events to defray some of the costs.

Students from the entire school, grade 7 to 12, are eligible for the trip, and adults are welcome to join as well.

In order for the trip to go ahead, about ten students from Sharbot Lake must attend, but students from other schools, and their parents, are eligible to go as well.

For Erica Kresen the fact that trip will includes students from grades 7-12 will be a great opportunity for students that don’t always interact at the school to experience something together and bring that camaraderie back to the school.

The trip represents her first opportunity to levve the continent and travel with her 12 year old daughter, who is a student in Sydenham.

“We’re already starting to save up,” she said.

Randy Mcvety was part of a school rip to Costa Rica a few years’ ago, and he found it to be an excellent experience for he students.

“The company that runs the trips keeps the students busy from morning until night. The days are packed with visits and learning opportunities. I can’t say enough about Education First.

Matt Green, now a grade 12 student, is the only student still at SLHS that participated in the Costs Rica trip.

He still lights up at the mention of it.

“It’s hard to remember all the things we did” he said, “because there was so much, but seeing a real volcano was certainly a highlight. All ina ll it was the experience of a lifetime.”

The Italian trip will feature more human history than natural history, and the artwork and architecture that the students will see is unrivalled anywhere else in the world.

Education First is offering some incentives for people to enrol in the trip by the end of November, and there are payment plans available as well.

At the meeting on November 24th, Caludio Grebizza will have all the details.

For further information about the Italy trip, contact Erica Kresen or Randy Mcvety at Sharbot Lake High School, 613-279-2131

Roughly 180 grade 7 and 8 students involved in the three Limestone District School Boards Challenge Programs will be participating in the “Challenge for Change - The Antipathy to Apathy”, a symposium that will take place on Wednesday Nov. 25 at the Queen’s University Faculty of Education’s McArthur Hall.

The symposium evolved from last years Environmental Sustainability symposium held at Loughborough Public School, in which students participated in workshops and developed projects that included community action plans and art projects geared towards informing the community of the subject of environmental sustainability.

This year the Symposium has evolved into a joint venture that includes all of the students from the three Limestone District School Boards Challenge Programs currently running at Loughborough, Calvin Park and Odessa public schools.

The Challenge programs have existed for over a decade and was designed to meet the needs of gifted and academically advanced students in the LDSB who are seeking new and innovative ways of learning.

As described by Alan Macdonald, one of the Limestone teachers involved in coordinating the symposium, this year’s symposium is composed of two facets: the first is a series of workshops led by a roster of 13 innovators including artists, professors, poets, engineers, musicians, writers, videographers and community action leaders who will share their knowledge of affecting positive change in the world.

Students will choose 3 workshops from a possible list of 13, will “provide students that have a desire to affect change with the mechanisms to move forward,” Macdonald said.

The second facet will see students taking their new found knowledge and applying it to a project of their own creation in a format of their own choosing.

Presentations can take the form of an arts/media presentation, experimentation, innovation, research project or community action. The finished projects will be put on public display in February.

On Wednesday night there will be keynote performances by “Theatre Complete”, spoken word artist Greg Frankson and a presentation by CBC broadcaster Jowi Taylor, who is renowned for building the Six String Nation Guitar.

For Alan Macdonald the Challenge for Change symposium “brings validity to the creative process for children raised in a knowledge based society that doesn't often allow time for such thought.

“Our students will meet innovators who use the creative process as they problem solve to create better communities…We want to give students the tools to put creativity in motion and the permission to use those tools.”

For more information about the upcoming Challenge for Change symposium please contact Alan Macdonald at Loughborough Public School (613) 376-3848.

Delaney and Ainsley MacDonald, hard at work, using the new netbbook computers.

In terms of technology, St. James Major is proving to be the Little School That Could, and part of its advantage comes from its small size.

With only 22 students in the school, it has been easier for Vice-Principal Dan Finn to bring St. James to the point where each student has their own dedicated computer.

And this year, 10 of those computers are really the latest thing in convenience - netbooks. Netbooks are small, lightweight laptop computers that can do most of what a laptop computer can do.

The St. James netbooks were loaded with a library of educational resources that have been developed by the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board, including exercises and games that are catalogued according to grade level. These resources are also linked to thousands of web-based activities that have been vetted by the board.

“The Parent Council decided to fund this initiative, and it brings the students a tool to personalize the curriculum and instruction in our multi-grade environment,” Finn said.

By adding the netbooks to St. James’ stock of desktop computers, there is now a dedicated computer for each student in the school. The netbooks are being used by the junior level students (grades 3-5) and the idea is to increase the number of netbooks in the school and allow students to take them home as well at some point.

“Good teaching and instruction still need to be at the heart of everything we do, but we believe that these types of technology initiatives allow us to develop learning outside of the regular classroom,” said Dan Finn.

The students are receiving keyboarding instruction every morning, and have been using computer programs in support of the basic curriculum, as well as to create cartoons of their own, and work on other multi-media projects. The possibilities for communication with students across the province and around the world are also being considered.

Research has shown that students’ standardized test scores improve with the use of laptops and St. James is hoping to expand the netbook program to the entire school.

For her part, student Ainsley Macdonald is a big fan of her netbook. “We use Ultra-Key [a typing program] every morning, which I like. Making comic strips for the school is really good,” she said. “We use the computer for about 45 minutes after French.”

The netbook program supplements the Smart Board technology that St. James purchased last year, bringing web resources right into the classroom for St. James students.

“All of this is focused on benefiting the students and the teachers by providing them with training on how to use the technology of the 21st Century,” said Vice-Principal Finn.

They’ve slowed down a provincial plan to set up a competitive bidding process that they are convinced will put them out of business, although small school bus operators have not put a stop to it.

But they feel they now have three years to win that battle.

At the second Annual General Meeting of the Independent School Bus Operators Association (ISBOA) in Kingston on Monday night November 9, the association’s President Shawn Payne (photo right) said, “We are facing challenging times ahead, but we also have some exciting things happening as well”.

The ISBOA was formed one year ago with one goal in mind, to combat a plan that will change the way school bus routes are contracted out in Ontario.

The way the system has operated for 60 years has allowed for the growth of small-scale operators, who have been able to purchase one or two buses or more, with the assurance they would have a route to use those buses on. The fees paid for the service has been provincially regulated.

In line with new provincial procurement policies, a new tendering process has been brought to 25% of the routes in select school boards around the province on a pilot project basis.

In reviewing the results of those pilots, the Ministry of Education came to the following conclusions in a report called “Student Transportation Reforms – Progress and Next Steps: School boards were able to achieve value for money through

Updated terms and clauses in contracts to reflect current costs and requirements.

Some achieved modest cost savings in contract rate.

Standardized service and safety levels for their jurisdiction”

Shawn Payne, who operates Martin's Company based in Napanee, has a different analysis of the pilot projects. He says that what happened in most cases was that small operators were shut out, allowing three large international bus companies to take over more and more territory.

The ISBOA has been urging the Ontario government to look to the United States, where they cite numerous examples of the elimination of small companies in favour of the Big Three International student bus companies (Stock Transportation, First Student, and Student Transportation (US) – which operates Student Transportation Canada) after a similar process was undertaken.

“Once the local competition was gone, the price went up, so local businesses lost out while school boards ended up paying more,” said Shawn Payne.

As part of its lobbying efforts, the ISBOA has had two meetings with Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, with little success.

“We met with Minister Wynne in February and came out of that meeting quite discouraged,” said Shawn Payne.” It was clear she had made up her mind to proceed. When we met with her again in September, she said she was looking for suggestions, but again it was within the competitive procurement environment.”

A second wave of pilot projects, with some alterations to the process, has been announced by the ministry, with the projected date for all school boards now being set for 2013.

In addition to lobbying the government directly, much of the efforts of the ISBOA have been directed to the opposition benches at Queen's Park and at municipal governments. To that end, Chris Stockwell (photo right), Executive Director of ISBOA, who was himself a former Conservative cabinet minister under Mike Harris, told the AGM of his activities on their behalf with the official opposition at Queen's Park.

“When we had no luck with the minister, we decided we had to get more aggressive,” he said, “and we have clearly gotten their attention. We had to go to the opposition, and to the media, and we have done that. I know that the government is paying attention to us because whenever we do something, they know about it the next day.”

In September, the Conservative Party appointed Elizabeth Witmer as Critic for Education. Witmer, who was at one time Education Minister under Mike Harris, has made a commitment to ask tough questions of the government about the school bus procurement issue.

But Stockwell said the real battleground for this would be fought by the association membership. “The more active you can be locally will go along way towards helping us, because this will not be finalised before the election in 2011, and local candidates will want to win the election. Every signature on our petition, every motion by municipal governments, will have an effect,” he said.

The recent setbacks for the Liberal government are also good news for ISBOA, according to Stockwell. “They have lots of problems right now, with e-health, cabinet resignations and the harmonized sales tax coming up next July. Do they want to take on another unpopular initiative?” he asked.

Sharbot Lake, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my community for supporting the Alzheimer’s coffee breaks. We recruited over 30 new hosts in the North and Central Frontenacs, both businesses and private individuals to put the coffee on to support clients and families affected by Alzheimer’s Disease or a related dementia. All coffee break hosts will be invited to the wrap up in December so we can share our successes with you.

The Sharbot Lake office has raffle tickets available as a fund raising opportunity that will be drawn at the January Alzheimer’s Awareness Evening on January 15, 2010 at St. James Major Church Hall. Raffle prizes include a painting donated by local artist Daphne Gardiner and a handmade quilt donated by a local seniors quilters’ guild.

January is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. Special events being held in our community include: a special caregivers’ evening, an Alzheimer’s awareness evening and, of course, the annual Walk for Memories.

The Alzheimer’s awareness evening will begin with a wine & cheese, followed by a showing of an Alzheimer’s theatrical presentation, "I'm Still Here", and conclude with a live art auction. Donations being accepted for the art auction.

Tickets are available through the Sharbot Lake office or from members of the Fund Development Committee Our monthly support group would like to thank Kevin Cruikshank, certified accountant from Seeds & Co. in Sharbot Lake for coming to the group in November to share valuable and greatly appreciated information on caregiver benefits and other tax information. Support group meets the first Wednesday of the month, 1-3PM at the Seniors Centre.

Please call to book your free Public Education or Awareness presentations for your community group. 

SLHS School to Community student Mitchell Combe in the Snoezelen Room’s “Floating Leaf” chair

Teachers and staff at Sharbot Lake High School are continuing their fundraising efforts to purchase a Snoezelen (pronounced “SNOOzelen”) Room for the school, to be used by students in the School to Community class there.

The room offers tools and materials that provide controlled multi-sensory stimulation to students with developmental disabilities, autism and attention deficit disorders.

Like Snoezelen Room fundraising efforts at other local schools, the SLHS project was initiated by an educational assistant in the School to Community program there. SLHS educational assistant Josh Goodfellow began the campaign when he witnessed first-hand the benefits the facility had on students in his class. What he saw convinced him to initiate a fundraising campaign to acquire the school's very own facility.

Currently SLHS students are bussed every other week to the existing Snoezelen Room at North Addington Education Centre in Cloyne, with financial help from Community Living-North Frontenac in Sharbot Lake.

Though beneficial to students, the logistics of transporting a limited number of students for a limited number of visits is not ideal. In SLHS's School to Community class, Josh and three other educational assistants, Amy Thompson, Mary-Joy Neadow and Janice Kellar are hoping to change that.

Josh started fundraising for the $10,000+ project last summer and applied for a grant first from the Limestone Learning Foundation (LLF), which was turned down because it didn’t meet certain criteria. The LLF then forwarded the application to the Community Foundation for Kingston and Area and the project received a $2000 grant.

Josh and his team continued their efforts and organized a baseball tournament in Parham last summer that raised another $1000 for the cause. CL-NF recently donated $1,000 to the project.

On Friday, Oct. 30 when I met with Josh and Tammy Steele, one of two School to Community teachers at SLHS, he had just wrapped up their month-long teacher torture fundraiser which raised another $350.

For Josh the project is an important one. He said, “Having a room of our own will allow more students to have access to it more often. And there will be long-term cost savings as well.”

Tammy Steele explained, “The Snoezelen Room provides both stimulation and relaxation to students in ways that the environment of a regular classroom cannot. It offers the students freedom of choice in a safe and non-intimidating environment and invites them to make their own decisions.” She added, “We’re really excited and hope to acquire the room this year.”

Next on the fundraising agenda is a Silent Auction/ Wine and Cheese Event that will be held on Friday, November 6 at 7PM at the school. The $12 ticket includes a glass of wine and live entertainment by an all-teacher band and grade 11 student singer Maggie Campbell.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please contact SLHS at 613-279-2131 or contact Josh Goodfellow, Amy Thompson, Mary-Joy Neadow, Janice Kellar or Tammy Steele.

Kudos to SLHS student Jonathon Gillies who helped design the poster for the event.

 Sharbot Lake Panthers Senior Girls basketball team. Front row l-r: Nicole Domen, Tiffany Carmichael, Rachel Neadow, Sarah Armstrong, Dana Mika. Back row l-r: Mr. Wes Garrod, Kaitlyn Wilkes, Courtney Meeks, Sarah McCullough, Sami Stencill, Mr. Mike Smith. Photo courtesy of SLHS

When the Sharbot Lake Panthers beat the LCVI Lancers 36-21 in early October, it was the first time in over eight years that the Sharbot Lake senior girls basketball team has won a game.

With only 200 students in grades 9 through 12, Sharbot Lake is smallest school in the KASSAA league, so it's easy to understand why scoring a win has been elusive.

But this year the team and their coaches Mike Smith and Wes Garrod made a point of ending that eight-year losing streak and actually decided that they would win a game. In fact winning one was just one of their set goals for this year. Scoring in the double digits at every single game and playing a full game at each contest were their other two main objectives this year and they not only accomplished all three goals, they even went beyond. On November 5 at their last league game of the season, the lady Panthers beat Napanee 44-38 and so ended up winning two.

That last win was an important one for the team and though they still came short of qualifying for the upcoming playoffs (they finished in a tie for 10th place), they are more than confident heading into the EOSSAA Championships, which will pit them against five other triple A schools in the region.

As I got to know the team’s coaches and players last Thursday on their home court, it became apparent that this year’s wins were not mere flukes. Rather, this kind of high calibre play has been in the works for the last three years since Mike Smith has been coaching the team.

Smith explained, “We have been slowly building up a culture here of high calibre play. It’s been developing since the players were in grades 9 and 10. This year I think it just all came together.”

Mike explained that that high calibre play consisted of putting two main key systems in place: playing a 2-3 zone on defense and playing a 4 out perimeter offence. He said, “The team is made up of a great group of athletes who were extremely quick to pick up those systems.”

Joined this year by assistant coach Wes Garrod, the two coaches this spring decided to run a spring camp for the team to give the girls a chance to play more ball during the year. Smith explained that many players from other school teams play club ball during the year and so have more opportunities to hone their skills.

Of the spring camp Smith said, “It was amazing to see how much the girls improved after those five practices.”

Part of the team’s success lies in the very positive and close relationships among the players. This team is made up of an extremely close and cohesive bunch of girls who have not only developed individually as players over the years, but have also gelled into a caring, close-knit group of friends who have a great time every single time that they play together on the court.

I spoke to the players after their 44-38 home win against Napanee on November 5, where they maintained a 10-point lead almost throughout and asked them how they felt about their league play this season.

Dana Mika explained, “We were really close to making the playoffs this year. At our last game against QECVI we lost by three points with three of our players missing. If we had won that one, we would have tied for eighth and had a chance at the playoffs.”

Regarding their cohesion as a team, Sarah Armstrong stated, “We’re all good friends, which really helps on the court, and we have a good time, which makes a huge difference in the way we play.”

Dana Mika added, “We go into a lot of these games against much bigger schools sometimes knowing that we aren’t necessarily going to win but we still give it our all.”

The players paid tribute to their two coaches, whom they described as both “very encouraging and very positive.”

Coming off a win is a great way to go into the EOSSA tournament and coaches Smith and Garrod are extremely proud of their team. Smith admitted, “Throughout the year opposing coaches and the referees have commented on how well the team is playing, really very humbling. He added, “We feel great for the girls. They’ve put a lot of time into improving their game and it’s great that they get to hear that from other people besides us.”

The EOSSAA Championships takes place November 18 and 19 at Rideau District High School in Elgin and the Panthers are hoping to make it to the second round of the championships.

Photo: Atom boys gave it their all at the 9th annual Joe Goodfellow Memorial Race at HPS

On Oct. 5 over 400 students from 14 different north eastern schools in the LDSB participated in the Joe Goodfellow Memorial Race Region 3 Meet held at Hinchinbrooke Public School in Parham.

It was Dan Kimmerer’s 9th year as organizer the event, which was named in memory of Joe Goodfellow, a former student at Hinchinbrooke Public School who was killed 9 years ago at the age of 19 in a tragic car accident.

For Dan the race symbolizes everything that Joe stood for, namely the love of athletics and doing the best that you can. Dan explained, “It’s great for the community to have role models and Joe was that kind of person who had a lot of character. I do this race for these kids and also for the memory of Joe.”

The atoms race was 1.85 km and the other two classes ran a 2.85 km course. There were 6 races in total, which included both male and female events in the atom (grades 3 & 4), bantam (grades 5 & 6) and midget (grades 7 & 8) classes.

Upon completing the race every single runner was congratulated at the finish line by Joe’s mom Cathy Goodfellow, who handed each participant a ribbon.

For Cathy every child’s effort deserves recognition at this event. “ I think it’s really important that their effort is acknowledged and everyone of them gets and deserves a pat on the back. It‘s a really difficult race.” She added, “And many thanks from our family to all of the volunteers who continue to work very hard to put this event on.”

The top 30 individual runners who placed in their races and the top three scoring schools will proceed to the Limestone District Championships, which will be held at Fort Henry Hill in Kingston on Oct. 13.

Congratulations to all of the runners who participated.

Lake planning coming to Addington Highlands

Rosemary Teed, representing the Skootamatta, Sheldrake and Pringle Lake Management Plan steering committee, made a presentation to Addington Highlands Council on Monday October 5. Other members of the committee that is working on the plan accompanied her, including Terry Murphy, the General Manager of Quinte Conservation.

“What a lake plan will do is identify and protect lake characteristics that are valued by our community, promote community discussion, education and action, and recommend land use objectives for the protection and enhancement of the lake,” Teed told council.

Pringle Lake is a smaller lake that feeds into Skootamatta Lake by way of Wolf Creek. Sheldrake Lake is located very close to Skootamatta, and water quality and development issues are shared by residents on all three lakes, so it made sense for them to work on the lake plan together, according to Rosemary Teed.

The lakes are also a major source of water for the Moira River system, which feeds into the Bay of Quinte.

“We want to assure council that our goal is not to stop economic development; it is a matter of making sure that the development that we have is balanced with the preservation of our environment for ongoing community enjoyment,” Rosemary Teed said.

The steering committee wanted to make a presentation to Council at this early stage in the project for a few reasons, the primary one being that any lake plan will have to be developed to work with the township’s Official Plan, so the township will have to be involved. As well, Rosemary Teed said the committee would like to establish a contact person on council, and they also were looking for a nominal donation, $500, towards the cost of the plan.

Reeve Henry Hogg said he would be willing to be the contact person for council for the next year. “I can only commit to a year because there will be an election next November, and we don’t know who will be representing Council after then,” he said.

As far as the $500 is concerned, Hogg said that it would have to wait until the 2010 budget deliberations take place in February.

The lake planning process will include various other community partners in addition to council.

There are two “r”s in Deerrock – Deputy Mayor Helen Yanch couldn’t help but ask Quinte Conservation General Manger Terry Murphy to change the sign on the Deerrock road. (Quinte manages that road). It is not Deer ock,” she said. “It is Deerrock with two ‘r’s”.

Murphy said he would look into installing a new sign.

AFAR pull back – Councilor Louise Scott reported that AFAR (the Addington Frontenac Area Radio) has done some more detailed engineering work and has now determined that the 500-watt transmission signal that they hope to send from the TVO tower north of Bon Echo will not likely reach listeners to the east of Plevna, or as far to the southeast as Sharbot Lake.

The problem is that a 3500-watt signal station based in Gatineau uses the same signal that has been assigned to AFAR, and the Gatineau signal will push AFAR back.

The current plan is to serve Addington Highlands and the western parts of North and Central Frontenac in phase 1 of the project, and to work on a second phase later on to expand the reach of the signal to Sharbot Lake and the Ompah/Snow Road area.

This still requires negotiating an affordable deal for use of the TVO Tower. AFAR has enlisted the support of Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky, who will be contacting Education Minister Kathleen Wynne (whose ministry oversees TVO) on behalf of AFAR.

Tender price beats estimate – The tenders for the rebuild of the Matawatchan Road came in much lower than anticipated. The winning bid, by Dunford Construction, was $757,418.30.

The project is being supported by a federal/provincial infrastructure fund that is slated to provide 2/3 of the cost of a $1.35 million estimate on the work, so Council decided to extend the amount of road to be rebuilt in order to make full use of the grant money. The township’s share of the costs is covered in the 2009 budget.

Bridge almost complete, but funding? – Road Superintendent Royce Rosenblath reported that the Wagers bridge repair is almost complete. Unfortunately, the federal grant supporting the project has not been delivered, with the province asking about an environmental assessment for the project.

“There never was a requirement when the work was initiated,” said Reeve Hogg, “but now they seem to be holding back the money.”

Staff will look into the matter.