Priorities
For over a decade, Zoe Royer as city Councillor enjoyed a close working relationship with many SD43 school trustees, District staff, and the Board overall. She is thankful that our school board is collaborative and governs well. Trustees elected in 2022 will continue the work of SD43's strategic plan titled Directions 2025, and soon begin the visioning process for the 2030 strategic plan.
As a School Trustee, Zoe's will champion:
1) Safety at school
Learners need to feel safe and welcome if they are to learn and grow. This includes personal safety for all students, free from harassment, bullying, intimidation, and other types of serious misconduct. The physical safety and well-being of students in and around school facilities is critical; the daily care, cleaning, sanitizing, and ongoing maintenance of our schools is very important. We also need adequate funding for emergency preparedness and the timely replacement of old ventilation systems.
2) Making space for childcare in schools
Over the course of the two years Zoe participated in SD43's Childcare Task Force on behalf of the City of Port Moody, she felt her role was to advocate for the creation of childcare spaces within schools. Families struggle to find space for their child in quality childcare, where they know their child will feel (and be) safe physically and emotionally. And where their child will be socially engaged and cognitively stimulated. It can also be very challenging to coordinate getting young children to school and daycare, when they are far from one another.
Zoe hopes to continue in this work as one of Port Moody's School Trustees. She believes opportunities for the province and our school district to work together in this capacity to achieve our goal are well within reach.
3) The dire need for more Education Assistants (EA's), School Counsellors, Registered Psychologists and other support workers in our schools
Zoe is very passionate about this issue, and if elected as school trustee, one of her top priorities will be to establish a task force to examine obstacles and identify innovative steps forward to delivering more EA’s into our classrooms. She is excited at the possibility of contributing her skill set to this process.
Here is an abbreviated sequence of ideas that Zoe has been thinking about:
