Welcome back and Welcome to Newbies!

Hello and welcome!
I am hoping some of you will have found this blog from the package of information and forms that we, the school council, distributed yesterday.

This year, Mme. Aradj is also running a blog and Twitter feed so we will be coordinating so that all sources of information are useful and will be careful that parents are not receiving too many emails or anything.

We welcome any and all parental involvement in the school council - just attending meetings is great and anything more is fantastic! We strongly believe that Lord Lansdowne parents can help make it an even better place for our children to be.

Do follow us on Twitter, if you are into that: @TorontoLLPS and also follow the official school feed @LL_TDSB . The school blog - http://lordlansdowne.wordpress.com also has links to individual class blogs.

Get in touch if you have suggestions or ideas or requests for what you would like to see here and stay tuned for the announcement of the first school council meeting!

Latest newsletter from French as a Second Language Advisory Committee (FSLAC)

Click on over to our French Resources page to see the latest newsletter from FSLAC.

PA Day tomorrow, Friday 5th of June

Just a reminder about tomorrow's PA Day. The weather forecast isn't looking great at the moment, unfortunately. Enjoy the weekend! Only 3 weeks left of the school year to go!

Details of Settlement on 484 Spadina/Waverly Hotel and Next Steps

 Dear LLPS community,

As you will read below, a compromise settlement has been reached this morning by the City of Toronto and the Wynne Group (developer) on the 484 Spadina/Waverly Hotel redevelopment. Please read below the statement from City Councillor Joe Cressy and TDSB Trustee Asuma Malik on this settlement.

As you will read, the compromised development is shorter (15 stories compared to 22) and will have setbacks on certain floors to further help mitigate the impact of shadowing on our schoolyard. Shade on our school yard remains a concern. There will be no shadows on our school building.

I think this is a pretty good settlement—perhaps the best we could have expected considering the circumstances—and a testament to the hard work of our community. I want to single out our champion, Amy Furness, but also give tremendous gratitude to countless of other parents who have spent dozens of volunteer hours in preparation for and at the Ontario Municipal Board hearing.  

It is important to note that this settlement was reached during confidential discussions over the past few months between the City of Toronto and the developer, and that the LLPS School Council was not invited to participate in these discussions.

I will spend the morning at the OMB to get further clarity on this settlement as well as next steps. I will pass along the information as I get it.

As you will remember, the TDSB bowed out of the OMB discussion in exchange for a sum of $1 million from the developer. We understand that the TDSB will still receive much of this funding, even though a compromise was reached and the building height reduced.

We need to ensure that this funding goes 100% to our school and community to help us redevelop our playground and site so that we can still save as much of our sunshine as possible. Please stay tuned for further details on this, but we already know that we will advocate alongside our Trustee, Asuma Malik, and City Councillor, Joe Cressy.

I welcome you sharing your reactions and questions to this news. Please feel free to Tweet them (to @TorontoLLPS) and share them on our Facebook group using our hastags: #saveoursunshine #484spadina #trinspa

Thanks,

Miriam

LLPS School Council Chair

Documents relating to today's settlements can be viewed here

PS. I have heard that there will be an announcement at 2pm today on the potential strike action (word-to-rule) planned for Monday. We will keep you posted with details and how it will impact next week. Stay tuned.

Nepal earthquake - relief effort

Ms. Mills asked us to pass on the following information about how Lord Lansdowne and the TDSB are reacting to help and acknowledge the terrible earthquake that happened in Nepal. I know many of you will be supporting the efforts to help in your own way and I am sure you will be pleased that the children of Lord Lansdowne will be aware and helping too. From Beth:

It has been difficult to hear the reports and see the images emerging out of Nepal following the devastating earthquake. Sadly, the death toll continues to rise each day, thousands have been injured and an estimated 8.1 million people are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance: food, shelter, primary medical care and clean water. Families in our own community are affected by the devastation.

-        Flags will be lowered to half-staff at each of our schools on Monday, May 4th.  We will also observe a moment of silence throughout the Board that day.
-        We will be supporting the Canadian Red Cross in their relief efforts. Proceeds from our next three pizza lunches (May 5,12,19) will be donated to the Red Cross.
-        The organization already has teams on the ground in Nepal providing assistance to those in need. To contribute online, visit the TDSB website at www.tdsb.on.ca.  You can donate at school or our regional offices (5050 Yonge Street, 1 Civic Centre Court and 140 Borough Drive).
-        For all donations in excess of $20, made either online or by cheque, tax receipts will be issued by the Canadian Red Cross. The TDSB fundraising appeal will run until May 25th. The federal government has announced that they will match all eligible donations made by that date.

Program Area Review - where will all the students go?!

As most of you will be aware, the English stream in Lord Lansdowne, grades JK to 6, will be taking up a new home in Kensington Community School in the autumn. Many of you will also be aware that this was a solution arrived at with the involvement of parent councils from Da Vinci, Kensington and Lord Lansdowne schools. In fact, the original proposal included the Da Vinci school moving to Kensington to allow for expansion but this part of the proposal - mainly for financial reasons, we are told - was not accepted.

However, the Program Area Review has been reconvened to further sort out the issues of accommodating growing numbers of students in the area, the supposed under-utilization of Kensington and so on. Kensington has been under threat of closure!  Lord Lansdowne has been bursting at the seams! Parent input and community involvement is really valuable to this process.

If you would like to review the documents regarding this and send some feedback, if you have any, you can read them here (documents relating to the upcoming meeting on the 28th of April) and also here (broader information about the topic and more documents!) and send feedback to Miriam, our council chair here.

If you are totally confused but quite interested in it all, you may be interested in attending Ausma Malik's SPACE FORUM on the 30th of April at Ryerson from 6pm to 9pm, childcare will be provided. (If the link doesn't work at first, try right clicking and "open in a new tab" on your computer...)

Newlsletter images - apologies!

Just a quick note to apologise to those receiving the email newsletter who could not see the images in the last couple of weeks. I am not sure what the problem is but will be doing my best to solve it nonetheless!