FRIDAY
November 21 2014
Vol. 105 No. 94
PACIFIC SPIRIT 12
Everyday is like Sunday HOLIDAY HUB 14
Book giveaway SWEET SPOT 24
Purebread rising There’s more online at
vancourier.com WEEKEND EDITION
THE VOICE of VANCOUVER NEIGHBOURHOODS since 1908
New trustees spell out agenda
Vancouver School Board welcomes five newcomers Dec. 8 Cheryl Rossi
crossi@vancourier.com
The spotlight has recently shone on newly elected Green Party of Vancouver school board trustee Janet Fraser as she’ll hold the deciding vote on issues that split the four Vision Vancouver and four NPA trustees. As the Courier detailed earlier in the month, Fraser wants to make the board feel less distant to parents. She wants the board’s
revised sexual orientation and gender identities policy fully implemented, more action on making the district environmentally sustainable and additional support for poor and aboriginal students. But what are the personal priorities of the other four newbies? One is from Vision Vancouver, which lost its majority on school board Nov. 15, and the other three are from the NPA, which increased its share of seats at the school board to match Vision. The four newcomers and fellow first-timer Fraser will be sitting at a table with four veteran incumbents, including current chair Patti Bacchus, and, as we reveal in our story on page 6, they’ll have a
lot to learn in the coming months and years. It’s time to learn a little bit about each of them in turn:
Joy Alexander, VisionVancouver
A parent, retired teacher and school psychologist, Alexander, who holds a doctorate in educational psychology, wants the VSB to engage doctoral students in measuring and setting baselines for new programs and to carry out research that could be used to improve them. “We put in a program for aboriginal children at Macdonald [elementary]” she said, as an example. “Get baseline figures in there to see how you can track it
to see how you can tweak it, how you can make it even better.” Alexander is concerned about funding for the school district and wants to ensure students with special needs and aboriginal children receive adequate attention and support.
Penny Noble, NPA
Noble, executive director of Bike to Work Week B.C., a former teacher and public relations and marketing veteran, is most concerned about funding. She wants to make sure the board maintains a positive relationship with the provincial government and wants to look at additional sources of funding that include grants and donations.
“It’s done quite successfully in a couple of other school boards and I’d just like to look at that model and see whether we can apply that to Vancouver,” she said. Noble believes the board’s public solicitations and advertising in schools policy needs to be reconsidered with input from parents, students and teachers because “it’s fairly vague.” “There certainly are some really great opportunities out there that do not impact at all on curriculum or require any branding, or anything like that, that can be looked at, and that includes not-for profit organizations, charity organizations, foundations and individual donors,” she said. Continued on page 7
From the Lutz to chasing pucks
Figure skating makes teen stronger at hockey Figure skater Hannah Janda had nailed almost all the advanced double jumps, both the Lutz and flip, leaving just the difficult double Axel as the last target on her list. But the 13-year-old athlete will never pull off the jump. Three months ago, Janda hung up her toe picks for a pair of hockey blades and joined the forward line of the bantam Vancouver Angels, the city’s only all-girls hockey association. “I love having a team,” said the Churchill secondary Grade 8 student. “You win together and you lose together. If you don’t do as
well in figure skating, you’re just on your own.” Her first skate at the Killarney rink on the Angels home ice came in September when the hockey association hosted a free clinic for inexperienced skaters. Janda was no novice since she’d been figure skating for 10 years, but otherwise she was a rookie in a new sport. Her centre of gravity was thrown off and keeping perfect posture didn’t help her balance. The serrated edge of a figure skate blade was wiped smooth, a round toe in the place of a poisepreserving pick. “I kept falling forward,” she said. “That was really weird. It was like learning to skate all over again.” Continued on page 29
GO FIGURE Hannah Janda, 13, started figure skating when she was three. Ten years later, she cast off the toe pick for hockey blades. PHOTO DAN TOULGOET
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mstewart@vancourier.com