A Message to Families from Grand Erie’s Director of Education

Good Afternoon Grand Erie Families,

I’m reaching out today with another important update regarding back-to-school.

As I shared last week, we’re currently finalizing our back-to-school plans for September and greatly appreciate your continued patience and understanding as we all work through these challenging times together.

We’ve posted a new feature on our website. It’s called Back-to-School Frequently Asked Questions. Here, you’ll find a wide range of information related to what school will look like for students in the fall as well as details on health and safety, masks, transportation and school day procedures. These questions were collected from you to help with making the best decision for your family this fall. You can find the FAQs on our website here.

On Monday, we’ll provide the Board of Trustees with another update on our return-to-school working plans. You can watch the update to Trustees on Monday night as the Board Meeting will be streamed live on YouTube. The link to this meeting, as well as the presentation, will be posted on our website on Friday.

This is a very unique back-to-school for all of us. There’s a lot of information that we need to collect from families and our goal is to always make it as easy as possible for you. As a result, we’ve made an important change.

Moving forward, we’re asking all families in Grand Erie to complete a short survey about their back-to-school plans. This survey will ask you to select the learning choice for each student in your family as well as identify your technology, transportation and child care needs.

The Back-to-School survey will be posted on our website here. I want to thank you in advance for your cooperation in completing the survey by August 23 so that we can ensure a smooth transition for all students this September.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to providing you with another update next week.

Grand Opening of the Snoezelen Room

Elgin Avenue Public School welcomed staff, students and community to the Grand Opening of the Snoezelen Room on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

On hand for this special occasion was Chair of the Board Carol Ann Sloat, Trustee Rita Collver and Superintendent Liana Thompson as well as several members of the community that contributed to the fundraising, and Elgin staff members.

Allie Richardson (teacher of students with autism), Lori Minarik (EA working with students with autism) and Samantha Nicholson (Principal) worked together for over three and a half years to fundraise for this $30,000 project. The Elgin community, parents, local charities and the Grand Erie District School Board all came together to make this project a huge success.

A Snoezelen Room is a multi-sensory environment that provides a controlled, safe, relaxing space for individuals with a variety of sensory needs. The room is set up to give individuals a positive space where they can meet their specific needs in a calming atmosphere. This atmosphere helps in reducing fear, anxieties, repetitive behaviour, self-abusive behaviour and aggressive behaviour so that students are better able to learn. Students at Elgin in both self-contained classes and in the regular classes will be able to access the room to help meet their sensory needs.

According to Seth, a student who accesses the room daily, “It is the best room ever!!!”