New catholic school board director announced

By Maryam Farag

The Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board has a new director.

Terry Lyons is presently the associate director, head of human resources and the executive superintendent of corporate services.

Lyons began his education career as a teacher in the York Catholic School Board before returning to his native Windsor in 1999 and begins his new role on Oct. 31.

“We want to provide the best rich, faithful environment to our students as we can, and ensure an almost personalized education to as many kids as we can,” said Lyons. “Not everybody learns the same.”

Current director Paul Picard will be retiring on Oct. 30.

Stephen Fields, communications coordinator at the WECDSB, said he is looking forward to working closely with Lyons and begin this new chapter in the board’s history.

“I believe Mr. Lyons is going to be a tremendous director,” said Fields. “He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in education, both in the classroom and at the administrative level.”

Fields said he believes there are no changes that need to be made. However, he said they need to get even better at things they already do well. They are analyzing their education quality and accountability office data and identifying the schools that require extra support.

“One of the things we are really well-known for is our creativeness and innovation with respect to academies,” said Lyons. “We have the IB (International Baccalaureate) program, we’ve got construction academy going right now and we’ve got the business program and the hockey program.”

The Ontario Ministry of Education has posted new updates that will be introduced in schools for the 2018 to 2019 academic year. One of them is the updated curriculum and new report cards from kindergarten to Grade 12.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and Minister of Education Mitzie Hunter, were at Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute to announce the opening of public consultations for this new initiative and details of the new report cards.

“They are trying to create a global perspective of what the learner looks like and be able to report on more things about that,” said Lyons.  “We never had strict reporting for JK and SK but now we’re going to have that.”

Hunter also released an update to Ontario’s Education Equity plan on Sept. 7. This is a new three-year strategy to “reduce systematic barriers and ensure that all students in Ontario can reach their full potential and help them explore pathways to work, college, apprenticeship or university.”

“Not every kid wants to continue at school — some kids want to get into the workforce and we have to respect that,” said Lyons. “Right now only 33 per cent of our kids continue onto college or university, so there are a whole other 66 per cent of learners who try to do something else.”

The province is also boosting active transportation and breakfast programs to help students thrive and improve their well-being, in addition to increasing funding for ASSIST – a provincial team that provides support to promote student mental health across Ontario.

Students in Catholic schools throughout Windsor-Essex performed well above provincial averages on mathematics and literacy assessments and in some cases, at high rates never achieved before. Sixty-one per cent of WECDSB students in Grade 9 achieved the provincial standard in applied mathematics, which is a nine per cent increase over last year’s results. Ninety-one per cent of them achieved the provincial standard at the academic level, which is a three per cent increase.