ETSB last meeting before school board elections

The Eastern Townships School Board council of commissioners met Tuesday evening via zoom for a final meeting before the start of the campaign for the Nov. 1 school board elections.
Eleven commissioner positions as well as board chairman are up for grabs. Anyone interested in running for election has until Sunday, Sept. 27 at 10 p.m. to submit their nomination papers.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Student Ombudsman Christian Beaudry submitted his annual report.
Covering the time period from July 1, March 10 (because of school closures), Beaudry said he received 10 complaints.
Of those, seven were redirected because the complainants had not exhausted internal avenues to resolve the issues.
For the remaining three, one involved a complaint regarding services offered to a handicapped student. The complaint was resolved by the secretary general, Beaudry said.
The second was a complaint regarding a private school student using the ETSB’s transportation system. Beaudry said the complaint was not admissible because it was not regarding a student at the board.
The third complaint was about the expulsion of an adult education student from a physics and sciences distance education program. According to Beaudry, the student in question did not meet the deadlines in place to complete the courses. The complaint was referred back to the board.
Based on the complaints he received, Beaudry surmised that the board’s internal system for managing complaints is working well. He added that to his knowledge, no students had been expelled because of violence or bullying incidents in the last year and he had no recommendations for improvements.
ETSB Secretary General Éric Campbell pointed out that Ombudsman Beaudry’s contract had been renewed with the ETSB for another three years.
The board approved the appointment of a new principal. Amélie Thériault was appointed to the position of principal of online learning at a 40 per cent workload.
During his Director General’s report, Michel Soucy said that as of Tuesday evening, there had been no positive cases of COVID-19 in any schools or centres in the ETSB.
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