Woodlands School Council

The Woodlands School Council will hold its final meeting of the 2009/2010 school year on Monday, May 31 at 7:30 pm.

The agenda for this meeting is as follows:

1. Update from the Peel School Board on Funding Equity Issues
2. Review of outstanding expenditures for this year
   1. Website hosting
   2. Scholarship Plaques
   3. Teachers’ Breakfast
   4. Photocopying
3. Year End Financial Update for the Woodlands School Council
4. Principal’s Update
5. Nomination / selection of the School Council Executive for the 2010/2011 school year
6. Any other business

The current co-chairs will be leaving The Woodlands shortly as our respective students are both finishing Grade 12. Sangeeta and Mark wish to thank all the parents, teachers, and administrators that we've had the pleasure of working with over the last few years. Our involvement with the School Council has been very satisfying and we heartily encourage anyone interested in getting involved with the council next year to attend Monday's meeting and learn more about its activities and responsibilities.

On behalf of the entire School Council, good luck to all Woodlands students with your final exams, and best wishes to all for a safe and enjoyable summer.

The Woodlands School administration has asked the Parent Council to pass this message on to our mailing list. We encourage you to devote a few minutes to completing the survey by Thursday afternoon.

Dear Parents of The Woodlands School,

A school's mission, vision, values, and collective commitments are generally revisited every 3 to 5 years to ensure that they reflect the current School Success initiatives. Prior to the school year ending, we'd like to begin by revisiting the school's mission statement.

It is important that a mission statement have the input of parents, students, and staff. To facilitate this I have attached a short anonymous survey. We'd like you to take a few minutes to provide us with your ideas on two questions that will support the writing of a new mission statement for our school.  A similar survey will be given to staff, and to randomly selected students in the school.

Please take a moment to complete the survey by clicking on the link below. We would appreciate your participation in this survey before 3 pm on Thursday, May 20th.

Link to parent survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6V5ZP9D

Thank you,

Carol Suhay

Vice Principal, The Woodlands School

905-279-0575, ext. 403

Space is still available for the Body Image for Adolescents presentation at The Woodlands tonight. The presentation starts at 8:00pm, following the 7:30 council meeting which is also open to all parents.

Please register on the website if you will be attending the Body Image presentation so that we can confirm numbers with our guest speakers.

Thanks and we hope to see you there

The Woodlands School Parent Council

The Woodlands School Council would like to remind you of two events upcoming on the evening of April 26:

 School Council Meeting

The April meeting of the school council will be held from 7:30 to 8:00pm. The agenda for the meeting is available on our website. The meeting is open to all parents and your contributions are welcomed.

 Body Image presentation

School Council is sponsoring a presentation on body image for adolescents and teens, taking place at 8:00pm on April 26. more details and a registration form are available online as well.

Fresh off their gold medal rankings at MusicFest, The Woodlands Music Department is stepping out with two exciting performances in the coming weeks.

On Friday, March 5 the Senior Repertoire Class will be performing with the Toronto Youth Wind Orchestra and four other high schools at the Toronto Centre for the Arts. The ensembles will be led by American conductor Frank Ticheli. The performance begins at 8 p.m in the Weston Concert Hall which has one of the finest acoustics in the city of Toronto.

A limited number of discount tickets are available for this event, and must be purchased from the Music Activity Council no later than Tuesday, March 2nd.

On Wednesday, March 10 The Woodlands Music Department presents Harmonies for Haiti: An Evening of Chamber Music at Erindale United Church, 1444 Dundas Crescent, Mississauga. Admission is by donation at the door and all proceeds will go to support Haitian relief efforts. For more details, contact mac.woodlands@gmail.com.

Please support our talented musicians at either or both of these wonderful events.

As some parents will already be aware, Ms. Gray, our principal will be leaving The Woodlands at the end of the 2009-2010 school year to assume the principal position at a newly constructed secondary school.

On March 1, Carol Speers, our school superintendent will meet with parents to solicit our input on
qualities we would like our next principal to possess. Our feedback will be taken into account as the school board selects the next principal from their pool of qualified candidates.

All parents are invited to join us at 7:30 pm on Monday, March 1st for this important discussion.

The Woodlands School Council extends its thanks to Ms. Gray for her years of dedicated and tireless service to our school. Please also accept our heartfelt congratulations on your selection for this new challenge.

We’re four days away from the Developing Future Leaders presentation on February 22nd. It looks like turnout will be excellent. If you haven’t signed up to attend yet, please consider doing so.

In addition to a great speaker we’ve had fabulous support and donations from the local community. As a result we’ll be offering some tremendous door prizes to attendees:

1. Student prize – Gift cards worth $100 at Square One and $20 at Swiss Chalet. To be eligible, your student must return the tearoff response from the newsletter that went home with report cards.
2. Grand prize #1: A charcoal BBQ donated by Home Depot plus a gift card for Metro grocery store. Mmmm, I can smell those coals already.
3. Grand prize #2: A $100 Square One gift card
4. Consolation price #1: A Starbucks / cookie gift pack
5. Consolation prizes #2 through #4: Video game packs for Xbox, Playstation, and Wii courtesy of Best Buy
6. Consolation prize #5: A Tea and Jam basket plus Cineplex card.

Remember, you have to be in attendance to win. With a great speaker, refreshments courtesy of Tim Hortons (Burnhamthorpe/Creditview and Britannia/Creditview stores) and Krispy Kreme (Heartland location), and an excellent chance to take home a door prize, why not join us on  February 22? Just remember to sign up at http://woodlandscouncil.com/events/leadership so we know how many people to expect.

Finally, the school council would like to thank these companies for their donations. Please consider their support for our school in your patronage.

The Woodlands School Council along with Administration and staff is pleased to invite parents, students and community members to a free seminar on “Developing Future Leaders”. The seminar is being held on February 22nd at 7:30 p.m.  at the Woodlands School. 

Chris Cummins, a nationally acclaimed speaker will share his humour, passion and story-telling skills to deliver his key messages:

1. Character Traits and Learned Skills to be an effective leader
2. The how and the when of leading e.g.: when to be a leader and when to be a follower, how to lead by example, and the dynamics of being a leader within a group.
3. Leadership beyond the academics
4. "Attitude"

Additional information and a  promotional flyer can be found at http://woodlandscouncil.com/events/leadership

As a result of the interest in the Speaker Series, we have extended an open invitation to the parents and students of our feeder schools as well as our School Council partners, Loyola Catholic Secondary School and Erindale Secondary School. 

Light refreshments will be served.  In addition, two lucky attendees will be awarded great door prizes at the end of the presentation.  Promotional campaigns are underway within the Woodlands
community to ensure that everyone can take advantage of this excellent opportunity.

To help us estimate food and drink quantities, attendees are asked to register on the website.

Happy New Year!

The agenda for the Woodlands School Council meeting taking place on January 18, 2010 at 7:30 pm can now be downloaded from the website. We hope to see you there.

Best wishes to all of our secondary students on your upcoming first semester exams.

Kick start your holiday season by joining us tomorrow (December 1st) at our second annual Chapters Night.  It is a night of fun for the entire family.  The evening will feature some short music performances, dramatic presentations, books/literacy talks by students and teachers.  10% of all purchases made that evening can be directed toward the Woodlands fund raising event.  (IRewards cannot be used toward this event).  Please join us for an evening of entertainment and fundraising.

For more details see the event announcement on the school council website.