The Portage la Prairie School Division held its first board meeting of the fresh school year on Tuesday night, in which an assortment of topics were covered, including:  

  • Teacher contracts being approved.  
  • Staff and students having new email addresses this year. 
  • A new divisional website. 
  • "Strong beginnings" an exercise with students and teachers within schools in the division this Friday (September 16th.)
  • "Peace Days" being proclaimed within schools in the province (September 15th – 21st.) 
  • A welcome back from Portage la Prairie School Division Superintendent Todd Cuddington. 
  • School Support Staff Week coming up (September 26th – September 30th.)
  • A reminder that the school board election are next month on October 26th. 

Superintendent Cuddington stated during his welcome back message that the feedback he has received from schools over the last few days has been fantastic. 

"It's great to be returning to what feels like normal. I think the message from the division and from teachers and administrators is that we want to really work on coming back strong and really working to close some of the gaps that developed as a result of COVID," says the superintendent. "We are wishing everyone a successful year and hopefully a year that continues to look like it used to." 

Regarding COVID protocols, Cuddington says the things the division has had to implement in the last couple of years have largely disappeared.  

"However, the fundamentals remain in place, and we're going to continue to do those things to keep our schools clean and safe and transmission low. We'll obviously continue to monitor the information that comes to us from public health officials, but the routines that we learned, that worked well, regardless of a pandemic or not, are remaining in place." 

Cuddington notes that the routines he is referring to include how schools move students in and out of buildings, how many students go out for recess and so on. 

"Those things universally were said to work well, and principals are going to continue to do those practices because they just work." 

The next scheduled school board meeting is set for September 27th.

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