COLUMN: Amazing Advances in Technology
If you own a smartphone, you have more computing power at your fingertips than NASA scientists had when they put people on the moon in 1969! And it’s in a small device, unlike the massive hardware the space agency used. Technology moves in leaps and bounds. As someone who grew up before home computers, transoceanic phone...
B.C. rolls out $95 million to support all 60 school districts
Government is providing school districts with a total of $95 million to help them extend the life of their facilities, put new supplies in classrooms and buy new school buses. Every school district in the province will receive a portion of this funding, which is being allocated through four provincial programs. Under the...
School district chair to propose banning school trips to US after Trump ban
The chair of the local board of education is going to be suggesting, at the SD 20 board’s next meeting, that school-related trips to the US be disallowed due to the trump administration’s travel bans. Teri Ferworn, chair of the SD 20 board, said such a policy may not even be the purview of individual school districts. “There...
Open Letter from Anglican Church to Senator Lynn Beyak
Senator Lynn Beyak's complaint that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) "didn't focus on the good" done by Canada's residential schools has provoked calls for her resignation, and some people wonder how she is qualified to sit on the Senate's Aboriginal Peoples Committee. For any who have not yet read the letter of...
Vote for government trusted to put kids first — BCTF
The BC Teachers Federation is firing the first shot over the bow as the province nears the upcoming election with a new ad expected to hit the airwaves Monday. The ad is the first part of the BCTF's campaign leading up to the provincial election and the period when school district budgets will be set for the coming school...
BC Search and Rescue Warns of Another Scam
Be aware: if anyone phones you and asks for funds for a Search and Rescue group, it's a scam. " We cannot state clearly enough, not one of the 80 recognized SAR groups in British Columbia, ask for donations by phone. And neither do any of the recognized air or marine search and rescue groups in BC. Simply put, if you...
Castlegar Students Step Out Into The Wonder Of Winter
This winter, over 3,000 elementary students throughout the Columbia Basin stepped out of their classrooms and into the magical world of Winter Wonder. In the Castlegar area, Winter Wonder educators Alyssa Belanger, Genna Lazier and Mary Searchfield took twenty Kindergarten to Grade 3 classes from Kinnaird Elementary, Fruitvale...
The Peel: Intact wilderness is a hedge against our ignorance
In 2011, I travelled with my family down Yukon’s Hart River. It’s one of seven pure rivers in the Peel River watershed, a 68,000-square-kilometre wilderness that’s been at the centre of a legal dispute for many years and a land-use planning debate for more than a decade. For two weeks, we fished from the river’s vibrant green...
BCTF vote results on implementation of restored language
BC Teachers' Federation members voted overwhelming to ratify the agreement to implement their restored collective agreement language a BCTF media release said on its website Friday. The BCTF said the agreement will see all the substantive working conditions that were unconstitutionally stripped from teachers' collective...
Province reaches tentative agreement with BCTF
The BC Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA) and the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) entered territory at times thought would be impossible to achieve after the two sides reached a tentative Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) negotiated pursuant to Letter of Understanding (LoU) No. 17 to the 2013-2019 BCPSEA-BCTF Provincial...
