ESK PA committee meeting report 24.11.09

Wednesday, 24 November 2009

Present: Anja Bühner, Ana Gorey, Letizia Dalle Donne, Barbara Bellosa , Ann Sierig, Barbara Weiner,, Nathalie Beroard-Barth, Mme Cegretin (for David), Debjani Basu , Christiane Sardain, Hamid Bateni, Cindy van Velzen, Sarah Winthrop, Michel Messmer, Madaleine Koch, Debjani Basu, Kevin Barber.

Apologies: Jacqueline Ribeiro, Flemming Merrild

Cindy van Velzen welcomed everyone and expressed her amazement that a year has passed since we last did this. It had been a tough year and the PA had made great strides getting more visibility as well as more respect from the school and parents. We had a good basis to start work from.

Cindy reminded everyone that they were now the face of the PA Committee. Sarah explained about the information flow – Class rep to Section rep and then the PA. It was important to keep this exchange flowing as it was a way for the PA to get an overview of what was going on in the school as well as a way of protecting the parents anonymity. In the past, parents were not aware that there are other ways of addressing an issue other than one on one with the school. We are their voice.

Cindy thanked last years’ Committee members for all their hard work and said how much she was looking forward to working with all the new people. There was a nice combination of old members 7 and 9 new members. There were many activities and plans for this year and now hopefully the manpower to tackle them successfully. It was also fun as well as hard work. She was delighted to see everyone here this evening except Flemming Merrild and Jaqueline Ribeiro - 15 out of 17 was great. In fact, we were one too many as Flemming Merrild needed to be re-elected at the General Assembly. The solution found was for one of the Committee to officially stand down and for him to be co-opted. This would not prevent the ex-member joining in fully and being first on the list should anyone else stand down.

Cindy asked everyone to introduce themselves, why they wanted to join the PA, what their expectations were, to see who wanted to do what and who was available to help with the immediate events organised, namely Intersport, Christmas evenings and the New Year Dinner.

Cindy van Velzen was unanimously re-elected as President as were Ana Gorey as Vice President and Kevin Barber as Treasurer. In addition, Sarah Winthrop would continue dealing with Communication, Anja Bühner with after school activities and Flemming Merrild with Transport. A second member for the Transport Committee also needed to be nominated. Following a discussion on the nominations for the Canteen – Uwe Zweigner would continue joined by Jaqueline Ribeiro, Ana Gorey and Hamid Bateni.

Following some explanation and description of the work of the PA and the responsibilities involved (impossible to go into everything) members expressed their interest in a number of working groups which would be finalised over the coming weeks. There were the immediate issues as identified over the last year, see PA Objectives (annex 1) as well as the Events and Ideas for 2009/10 (annex 2), and other much needed projects such as information for new families.

Cindy thanked everyone for coming and said our next meeting would have to be soon, mid December, as there were many things that still needed to be put into place and organised.

PARENTS ASSOCIATION 14th November 2009

Annex 1

OBJECTIVES 2009/10
3 L’s Languages − The issue of languages is complex with obvious tensions as to the handling of mother tongue, dominant language, host country language, bilingualism, second language, section language, other languages, non-native students, language acquisition, parental choice, reduction of hours, differentiated teaching, language support. Mother tongue teaching is the cornerstone of the European school, as is diversity. Already at the end of last year we had looked at providing more after school activities to help with languages and this year even more so. We would like to see a real reflection on how best to improve harmonisation between sections, rates of repeating and emphasise the need for amongst others, increased, timely, learning support.
Lost hours − The question of teacher absences and days lost to the Baccelaureate have come up regularly over the years. We are conscious of the reasons why and applaud steps taken by the school to keep these to a minimum, replace teachers when they can, give out worksheets and permas. However, when confronted by parents’ legitimate expectations and complaints, explanations alone fail us. We would like to see a real reflection on how best to improve this on the basis of concrete information and emphasise the need for data protection.
Ligne directifs − Policy guidelines/procedures/FAQs on school issues like drugs, SEN, learning support, school rules, discipline exist in various forms and formats, varying from official BOG documents to accepted practices. These are complicated enough for those who understand the system but totally mystifying to many parents particularly recently arrived ones from other educational systems. Nor is it enough to cite a regulation as often these are broad policy lines with the implementation procedures varying from school to school and even from Section to Section within a school and worse still between one family and another. We would like to see a real reflection on how best to improve information to parents and students on these issues and emphasise the need to have clear, transparent procedures.

Annex 2

IDEAS AND EVENTS FOR 2009-2010

New Year Dinner – Friday 29 January 2010
Last year, the Parents Association invited all teachers and admin staff and class reps together for a dinner which was a great success and one we would like to repeat this year but a New Year dinner and dance theme.

Project Days Activities
To help encourage and contribute to their activities which enhance the school community through cross-section, cross-curicular and inter-school exchanges, the Parents’Association invite teachers to submit ideas and proposals for an activity and the PA will financially contribute towards making it happen. We have earmarked 2,000€ towards this. Why not stage “High school Musical”. All the kids know the songs. There could be work on stagecraft, auditions, rehearsals and the final day could be the performance. We encourage teachers to check out for competitions that the project days could be used for to prepare submissions. For example European Youth Debating Competition, European Essay Competition, etc.

Open Day prizes
The Parents’ Association would like to award 20 prizes to celebrate academic excellence. The Maths Prize, the History Prize, the Library prize, the Sport Prize, etc… We invite teachers across the sections to together nominate 5 pupils for each subject, taking into account all the best qualities we are looking for in our students – team work, creativity, etc.. You know better than us.

InterSport – EuroSport partnership
The PA learnt a lot last year and in particular from their involvement in EuroSport (see our Open Letter to Mr. Hoyem, June 2009). This year, the PA has begun a partnership with InterSport and the first event will be in December when the Karlsruhe Basketball team will give a basketball clinic for our two Eurosport Basketball teams.

Permanence room
The Parents’ Association would like to offer 200€ for quick facelift to the in order to buy educational material on the walls, maps, the periodic table, posters of famous people, historical timelines, language tips, etc..

Your school activities
Please let us know as soon as possible and if we can help in anyway, not least by announcing them on our new PA Website. Also can we help?
Abiball – Introduce new system where Year 6 organises the Year 7 Abiball but using money Year 7 raised when they were in Year 6. In order to make this transition there needs to be a 5000€ guarantee for this year which could be recuperated by fundraising spread over a few years.