PRESIDENT'S JOURNAL

CPCO’s Standing Committees

At its August meeting, the executive council selected member applicants to serve on CPCO’s five standing committees.

  1. Finance Committee
  2. Constitution Committee
  3. Political Action Committee
  4. Professional Services Committee
  5. Member Security Committee

On behalf of the executive council I am very pleased to welcome the 2009-2010 committee members. They will be led by a fine group of chairpersons and executive liaisons in the year ahead.

Committee work is key to the governance structure of CPCO since all committees consist of members from the field, chairs and executive liaisons and through their work assist the executive council in their decision making process as the Board of Directors for CPCO. Next month, the executive council will meet with the committee chairs and CPCO’s staff advisors to detail some of the exciting work that committees will undertake this year. Action plans and a calendar of events will be created and shared with the Council of District Representatives at the November meeting. It is then the responsibility of the CDR’s to communicate this information to all CPCO regular members at the local level. Local level feedback is solicited from members and in turn communicated back to the president directly. I will be joining each committee as an ex-officio member.

After receiving applications from interested members from across the province, it is the responsibility of the executive council to appoint members of committees. In many cases, successful applicants will have experienced unsuccessful applications in past. This is in part due to the executive council’s philosophy and commitment to maintain a diverse regional representation and panel balance across the five committees. Also, taken into consideration in the process of appointments is the mix of experience versus inexperience per committee. If you were an unsuccessful applicant this year to one of CPCO’s committees I would encourage you to please consider applying again next year.

Student Achievement

Undoubtedly much is happening in your schools with regard to board initiatives to address the Ministry’s mandate of raising the bar, lowering the gap and increasing public confidence in Ontario’s publicly-funded education system. CPCO is very interested in monitoring how principals are being supported by their boards in implementing these initiatives and whether this support is coming from Ministry mandated board leadership strategy initiatives. I will attempt to ascertain this information through my phone calls to local CDR’s over the next two weeks.

CDR Phone Calls

Thank you to the CDR’s who have responded to my president’s survey 2009! To date over 85% of CDRs have completed the survey. I know it takes time to fill out surveys and I know how very busy principals are. However, this information and the information I gather through follow-up phone calls will be extremely useful to me and indeed the entire executive council as we advocate (to our educational partners) for Catholic principals and vice-principals across the province. I am looking forward to the conversations in the next two weeks.

Upcoming Events

September 16-23 - CDR Consultations
September 21 - Presentation - Poor No More

If you would like to comment or provide feedback on the President’s Journal, please contact Paul Lacalamita at president@cpco.on.ca.