Question 3 – Zone 3 Response
Contents
The Question in brief
Response from:
– Alex Sivasambu
The Question in Brief
This question comes from Charlotte Dwyer and Ny Holmes, two Grade 11 Ottawa secondary school students who recently organized Nepean High School’s successful walkout against Ford’s changes to the curriculum.
Their Question
What steps are you going to take to ensure that students feel they are heard in regards to their involvement in THEIR curriculum?
Alex Sivasambu
First of all I like to say that I am deeply moved and impressed by Charlotte and Ny for taking the initiative in organizing the walkouts and finding ways to bring forward their opinions and showing that they care about their school education system and their peers future.
To answer your question,
One of my main mandates is transparency within the school board system and making sure parents’ and students’ voices are heard every step of the way.
Sex curriculum change is one of the major issue that’s troubling many at this stage, when I am elected, as one of my first project, I will form a committee, along with other fellow trustees, for revisiting this curriculum change, what studies were done during the 2015 curriculum change and why they were given precedence then and what changed now.
Normally school boards and government go through numerous researches from experts and thousands of dollars spend in doing these, and I will, along with the committee, study what studies are supporting the reverting back to 1998 curriculum and why this government didn’t take public/students’ opinion before changing this. I will bring forward a petition to the provincial government on behalf of the public and try my best to request a revision to this curriculum change.
I definitely feel that including the indigenous studies and truth and reconciliation council is an eye opener to our youth, and it should continue to be part of the curriculum. I also like to have students’ voices and their current problems heard on a continuous basis, to achieve that, I will organize a student/trustee council meeting set up periodically and have discussions about troubling issues, and see how we can tackle issues arising at school levels. When there is a problem, I believe in reaching out to the sources, my main goal is to integrate students from 10 schools of Zone 3 and listening to their problems and even have them come up with solutions for this. This will help them feel like a community and have standardized system among schools.I believe that students can have very valuable input in resolving problems and issues within their schools.