Prince George residents will be able to watch as the public feedback gathered regarding the Kelly Road Secondary School is presented to the board.
The district will be livestreaming the board at 6 p.m. April 22 as an executive summary of the feedback is presented. There will be no opportunity for the public to comment during the livestream session.
“We appreciate that this is a highly anticipated stage in the engagement process,” said Tim Bennett, board chair. “It is for board trustees, as well. We have seen and received so much direct feedback, from public protest to heartfelt emails, and we are eager to see some of the trends and themes in the data from this questionnaire.”
Earlier this year the board approved the process of incorporating a Lheidli T’enneh name, Shas Ti, in the spirit of reconciliation, along with Kelly Road when the newly-constructed school opens … hopefully in September. The possible name change sparked considerable debate and two protests.
The feedback that will be presented to the board April 22 was collected from the public between March 20 and April 17 via a an online and paper questionnaire and phone-in response process. A series of public “table top” sessions was cancelled due to physical distancing criteria established to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The information will be received at the meeting, and then published on the School District 57 website: www.sd57.bc.ca for public review. It will include an executive summary, aggregate quantitative data on closed questions, and verbatim qualitative responses from the public’s open-ended question responses.
This is the last week for the public to provide input into the School District No.57’s questionnaire.
To date, over 2,200 responses have been collected from the questionnaire.
“It has been a challenging engagement process, largely due to circumstances outside of our control, and we anticipate that this decision will help us move forward together,” said Bennett. “Students, staff and the community will have a new state-of-the-art learning facility by September 2020, and it’s time to embrace the collective opportunities ahead of us.”
A final decision regarding the new school building name will be made by the Board of Education at the regular public board meeting on April 28.