Active Life Parks and recreation offers programs to keep youths busy this summer.
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www.nanaimobulletin.com
TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2015
VOL. 26, NO. 97
Trustees recommend re-opening Cedar as secondary school
Lantzville hires facilitator for staffing issues
BY KARL YU THE NEWS BULLETIN
Nanaimo’s school district business committee is recommending the Cedar school re-open as a Grade 8-12 high school in time for the 2016 school year. The facility was being converted to an elementary school, but work was delayed to allow for a review of the district’s 10-year facilities plan. Trustee Natasha Bob proposed the recommendation at Wednesday night’s committee meeting. Jamie Brennan, Bill Robinson and Tania Brzovic voted against. “It turns the clock backwards and it’s going to be very costly, as I said [Wednesday] night, it adds secondary capacity to our already over capacity system,” said Brennan. “It’s really a retrograde step.” Brennan also disagreed with the timing, given the results of the facilities plan review were made public earlier during the meeting. Steve Rae, school board chairman, said trustees had time to review the facilities plan report earlier in the week and were at consultation meetings. “We all attended all the roundtables, we attended all the stakeholder meetings, we attended all the presentations. This isn’t information that was just dropped on us yesterday,” Rae said. Cost hasn’t been determined yet, according to Rae, as staff will make a recommendation on how work should be finished. “There’s not a lot of work done to the inside of the building luckily, and that is the reason why we moved so quickly, because we wanted to move before we started spending a lot of money in that building to see if that was the way we were going to go,” Rae said. He denied the suggestion, made by other trustees, that the decision to re-open the school was pre-determined. “That is completely not true. We all went into this with an open mind,” Rae said. Trustees are expected to vote on the recommendation at their April 22 board meeting. reporter@nanaimobulletin.com
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CONSULTANTS WILL investigate state of relations and create code of conduct. BY TAMARA CUNNINGHAM THE NEWS BULLETIN
GREG SAKAKI/THE NEWS BULLETIN
Facing cuts
Dave Harper, wearing a bonnet of low-hanging fruit, jots down on an index card his thoughts on public education at the Families Against Cuts to Education rally Sunday afternoon at Maffeo Sutton Park. Several rallies were held at the same time around B.C. that day, calling for greater funding of public education in the province.
The District of Lantzville will hire consultants to help craft a code of conduct and investigate the state of internal relations following a staff memo that highlighted concerns about council meeting decorum. Close to 60 people packed into Lantzville’s council chambers during a special open meeting last Thursday as politicians voted to hire two separate consultants to facilitate development of an organization-wide code of conduct and probe internal relationships. The review ties in with a memo from five of the district’s managers, who outlined concerns about decorum and tone of council meetings, including ridicule and criticism of staff’s work in public. CUPE has also requested input regarding its members and the district’s bullying and harassment policy, prompting council to include a look at the situation between management and employees in the review. There’s clearly a problem, according to Coun. Rod Negrave, who called for a code of conduct with teeth, as well as an investigation to find out what happened and why in regards to management’s memo so it can be fixed. “This is very similar to what I witnessed when I was back on council in 2009, same concerns about staff being mistreated,” he said. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough that we need to hire someone qualified, someone external, someone independent, figure out what the problem is, have it articulated, have it as public as possible ... and vote on it to fix things. This can’t be allowed to continue.” See ‘NO COSTS’ /4
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