April HARC Meeting Reminder

The next Hastings Anti-racism Committee (HARC) meeting will be held on Monday, April 12th from 7-8pm on Zoom. All Hastings parents and guardians are welcome to attend every meeting. Thoughtful discussion around equity, justice and human rights, with a mission to ensure that our school community upholds and embodies these values.

Zoom link to follow closer to the date.

We hope to see you there!

School Streets Pilot at Hastings Elementary!

Hastings Elementary, in partnership with the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver School Board is piloting a School Street to better understand if it can improve safety, encourage active travel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A School Street encourages and enables active travel, by opening a car-free block beside a school to walking, biking, and rolling during pick-up/drop-off. No motor vehicles will be permitted to enter or exit, but vehicles may remain parked while the School Street is in effect.

To make this pilot possible, volunteer ‘School Street Coaches’ are needed! As a School Street Coach you will be responsible for setting up, taking down and monitoring the School Street barriers during drop-off and pick-up. The School Street Coaches will receive instruction prior to their shifts and there will be a volunteer training session. There will also be prizes for volunteers who commit to the full month (2 shifts weekly).

To sign up for a volunteer shift please click on the following web link (or copy it into your web browser if clicking doesn’t work) to go to the signup sheet:

volunteersignup.org/JWJYE [volunteersignup.org] [eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]

Once you have signed up, a volunteer instruction booklet will be provided. A volunteer training session will also be held on April 6th (6:30-7:30pm) by the City of Vancouver and School Volunteer Coordinator

For any questions about the volunteer role, please reach out to the School Street Coach Coordinator:
Thea Wilson, thea.wilson@mottmac.com

Thanks in advance for your support!

February Meeting Minutes Now Available

If you weren’t able to join us on Tuesday Feb.23rd, the meeting minutes are now available!

School Trustee Jennifer Reddy joined us at the meeting and had this information to share in follow up:

The upcoming board meetings are posted here along with their agendas and links, please note the budget and school liaison officer review are both underway now: https://www.vsb.bc.ca/Calendars/Pages/default.aspx

Requests to speak as a delegation at meetings can be made via email or phone: https://www.vsb.bc.ca/District/Departments/Office_of_the_Secretary_Treasurer/Pages/Default.aspx

Next general PAC meeting is Wednesday, April 21st, 7-8:30pm.

Help us make our school library more inclusive!

As announced at the end of February, the PAC’s Hastings Anti-Racism Committee (HARC) is working with our Teacher Librarian, Erin Rickbeil and Iron Dog Books store (2671 E Hastings St) to launch a new project – a book drive to help make the school library more inclusive! We’d like to ask for everyone’s help in making our school library more representative of our school community.

We want to hear from everyone – what books would you like to see added to the library? Help us diversify the library by making suggestions! We’ll also be raising funds to help with the purchase of some of these new books. There are many ways that everyone – students, teachers and families – can contribute!

1. Fill in our online form to tell us what topics or characters you’d like to see more of. And let us know if there is a particular book you’d like to see in the library

2. Students and teachers can visit the library to write down their book suggestions and put it in the box that Erin has set up. Or if they can’t make it to the library, they can also fill in the Book Drive form in Teams. For students, it will be posted in the All Students @ Hastings Elementary channel. For teachers, it will be in both the general staff and library channel.

3. Starting Thursday, Iron Dog Books will have a bin full of books that Erin has already selected as ones that she’d like to add to the library. Visit the store to look through the books and recommend ones you think should be prioritized or choose others from the store to recommend.

4. If possible, support the purchasing of some of these new books. Any amount helps! Also starting Thursday, you can donate to the dedicated Hastings Book Drive account at Iron Dog Books or purchase one of the books Erin has selected (Iron Dog will set them aside for the school). You can also donate at any time through the School Cash Online donation form by selecting ‘E-Hastings PAC’ and specifying ‘Book Drive’ in the message section.

Before making your suggestions, we would appreciate if you could please check if Hastings Library already has the title, author or subject you are interested in. Follow these steps to check the library catalogue:

1. Visit: https://library.vsb.bc.ca/

2. Choose “Hastings Community Elementary”

3. Search by keyword, author, title

4. “No matches found” message means the library does not have the title.

Suggestions will be taken throughout the month of March, so everyone can make as many submissions as they like. Please keep in mind that all suggestions should be to actively diversify the library catalogue. Keep an eye out for posters around the school about the book drive and talk about it with your friends. We want to hear from everyone at Hastings!

And speaking of books, who’s getting excited for the CBC’s annual battle of the books – Canada Reads. It’s happening all this week! Whoot, whoot!

Thanks to everyone in advance for your support of this all important initiative!

Safe Online: Info that Clicks!

Speaker Series Volume 3: Parenting Online and Parental Controls Online

The PAC will present the third installment in our Speaker Series this year! Coming Tuesday, March 9th from 7-8pm,
join Merlyn Horton for an informative, engaging and useful look at
parenting online today and some immediately accessible tools and
techniques to manage our current challenges. A custom website, with
links to all resources and tools referenced in the webinar will be
provided to access to all. More info at https://www.safeonline.ca/

Reserve your tickets now. Please pay what you can afford. Donations to
cover the cost of the speaker are very much appreciated. Tickets available through Eventbrite now https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/safe-online-info-that-clicks-keeping-kids-safe-in-a-technological-world-tickets-143024380773