If you didn't hear that Halton District School Board has decided to remove English and Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) from Pineland Public School from our blog, Facebook page or Twitter feed, you most likely wouldn't know it was happening because HDSB is and has been a colossal failure at transparency and notifying the community of MAJOR changes like this one.
Since the December 2014 trustee vote (for a one-year extension to FDK if a minimum of 15 students register for the Junior Kindergarten program at Pineland by February 15, 2015) not one notice went in the paper, not a single tweet by HDSB mentioned this news or deadline, and it was nowhere to be found on the HDSB website's homepage under "Newsroom", a section for news releases. This is unacceptable and a flagrant disregard for the community. Do they not have an obligation to all taxpayers to properly communicate with us what they are doing, particularly if it is a massive change to our neighbourhoods?
Who needed to know about this sign up deadline for JK? Parents whose children are not even in the system!!! How would parents without children in the school system know about this Feb 15th deadline? They wouldn't. They don't. How would those planning on moving to this area of Burlington know anything about this deadline either? They wouldn't. They don't. Did HDSB convey this to real estate agents in the area so they could properly notify potential buyers? No, they did not. In fact, up until very recently there was still a "NEW! FULL DAY KINDERGARTEN IS HERE!" sign at Pineland even AFTER the vote came down to remove FDK and the English track from the school.
We asked others in the community if they could notify taxpayers because HDSB had failed to do so:
Since the December 2014 trustee vote (for a one-year extension to FDK if a minimum of 15 students register for the Junior Kindergarten program at Pineland by February 15, 2015) not one notice went in the paper, not a single tweet by HDSB mentioned this news or deadline, and it was nowhere to be found on the HDSB website's homepage under "Newsroom", a section for news releases. This is unacceptable and a flagrant disregard for the community. Do they not have an obligation to all taxpayers to properly communicate with us what they are doing, particularly if it is a massive change to our neighbourhoods?
Who needed to know about this sign up deadline for JK? Parents whose children are not even in the system!!! How would parents without children in the school system know about this Feb 15th deadline? They wouldn't. They don't. How would those planning on moving to this area of Burlington know anything about this deadline either? They wouldn't. They don't. Did HDSB convey this to real estate agents in the area so they could properly notify potential buyers? No, they did not. In fact, up until very recently there was still a "NEW! FULL DAY KINDERGARTEN IS HERE!" sign at Pineland even AFTER the vote came down to remove FDK and the English track from the school.
We asked others in the community if they could notify taxpayers because HDSB had failed to do so:
and they did - which is 100% more than HDSB has done. Here is the Burlington Post article dated February 6th and below is an email that was sent by Burlington Councillor, Paul Sharman, on February 4th with the subject line Urgent! Pineland Public School Kindergarten Students maybe closed!
Additionally, there was this Letter to the Editor on February 12th which highlighted HDSB's lack of information to the public and inadequate information. Still, no messaging from HDSB whatsoever regarding the February 15th deadline to register for JK at Pineland -- a deadline that fell on this long weekend known as Family Day. Oh, the irony!