Pick Up & Drop Off Routines:
A big thank you to all parents and families who were able to come out for the “Great Trek” today to help celebrate our school’s very first day! The next step for our school community will be to organize some efficient drop off and pick up routines in the coming days. It should be easier than starting out at four different school sites but I do expect there will be some logistical challenges to work through in the coming days.
Each day students will enter and dismiss through their exterior POD doors. Please make these exterior POD entrances your main pick and drop off points.
Until everyone knows where their children’s new classroom locations are we will have staff available in the main school hallway to assist in finding students and classrooms.
Parking Lot & Traffic Safety:
As we begin our first day at c̓əsqənelə I wanted to ask all families to be extremely careful driving in the school parking lot and along the 104th road. We will need to work together as a school community to ensure students can be as safe as possible travelling to, and from, the school. We plan to have significant staff supervision in the front parking lot area to help students learn how to safely leave the school site but we will need everyone’s help while we establish safe routines.
Lastly, to accommodate construction requirements for the new Community Centre the school’s main north entrance will only be open for school traffic during “peak” pick up and drop off times each morning and afternoon. At other times of the day, this east entrance will be fenced off, and used by the Contractor to access the Construction Site of the new Community Centre. During these “non peak” times our school will use the lower school entrance only. The specifics of this plan are listed below.
- For the next couple of months there will be some excavation equipment operating on an ongoing basis as the city builds retaining walls, building foundations and other structures for the new Community Center.
- There will be typical construction noise for duration of the community centre project, including sawing, hammering, equipment, including concrete deliveries and concrete pumping and other material deliveries. Such deliveries will be restricted to outside of the typical school drop-off and pick-up times.
- The east construction access will only be available for school staff and parents during the designated drop-off and pick-up times so as to prevent any potential conflict with construction activities.
- A temporary construction ‘gate’ to the school parking lot and drop-off area will be open only during those times, and closed otherwise.
- There will be some dust generated from construction activities, but we will try to keep that to a minimum.
- Fire Department and Emergency vehicle access will be available at all times through both vehicle entrances.
Thank you for the support and patience as we begin to launch our new school!
Mr. Wheatley