Building relationships: Details announced for semi-annual meeting of the P.E.I. Home and School Federation

Over the past month at schools across P.E.I., Home and School members have gathered for leadership training workshops, workshops focused on helping our local home and school associations become even more effective.

 

Home and School is a broad-based movement of parents, guardians, teachers, administrators and staff; to be an effective forum, local associations need local leaders, leaders who know how to run a meeting, keep track of the money, build relationships. Its those skills that our workshops have been focused on.

 

It’s that final point – building relationships – that will be the focus of this year’s Semi-Annual Meeting of the P.E.I. Home and School Federation, being held at Three Oaks Senior High School in Summerside on Tuesday, October 20 at 6:00 p.m.

 

Joining home and school delegates from our 53 member schools will be Education Minister Hal Perry, and Deputy Minister Susan Willis, as well as English Language School Board chairman Fred Osborne and board trustees, and staff from both the department and the board. The focus will be on informal dialogue: conversations about education, with an eye to transforming ideas to actions.

 

Each Home and School association can send five voting delegates to the meeting; there is no limit, however, on the number of other members who can attend, so associations are encouraged to bring a large contingent of parents, guardians, teachers, administrators and staff to ensure the widest diversity of views are represented.

 

Registration packages are being mailed out to local home and school presidents this week; contact the PEIHSF office if you have any questions or concerns about the meeting.

 

The P.E.I. Home and School Federation welcomes Ghislaine O’Hanley as Education and Engagement Coordinator starting this month. In this newly-created staff position, she will manage the Parent Leadership Grants program and also assist the provincial board and local associations in advancing the federation’s policy resolutions.

 

The deadline for policy resolutions to be considered at the 2016 annual meeting in April is Jan. 31. Home and Schools are encouraged to discuss possible resolutions at fall meetings, with an eye to identifying practical or policy issues of broad provincial concern that could benefit from our federation’s focus. While policy resolutions have always been the federation’s “super power,” and our members’ opportunity to directly effect education policy, with the addition of a staff person to assist in their development, communication and implementation, there’s now even more reason to put ideas in to action through resolutions.

 

Members are reminded that the P.E.I. Home and School Federation office in Charlottetown is staffed five days a week and ready to help with questions, concerns, resources or to simply be a sounding board when needed.

 

Contact the office at peihsf@edu.pe.ca or by telephone at (902) 620-3186 or, toll-free, 1-800-916-0664.

 

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October 2015 column

Written by Peter Rukavina, President of the PEI Home and School Federation  

This column appears in The Guardian newspaper during the school year on the first Wednesday of the month.