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60 Pages The Voice of Nerth and West Vancouver since 1969 FREE

District to get nine more teachers

Katharine Hamer
News Reporter katharinc@nsnews.com

THE dust has settled around the primary class
size issue that’s been dogging North Vancouver
School District 44 since the beginning of term.

On Tuesday, 2 tripartite committee comprising Paul Killeen, Deputy
Superintendent of District 44; Assistant Deputy Education Minister Rick
Connolly; and Sharon Wood, director of bargaining for the BC Teac!
Federation, reached an agreement about how to handle the shortage of

irs in North Vancouver schouls,

The North Vancouver Teacher’s Association lodged a grievance with
District 44 at the end of Septemb:

At the time, the Ministry of Education and District 44 were squabbling
about who was to blame. School district officials claimed they had not
received cnough money to reduce kindergarten-to-Grade 3 class sizes i
accordance with the provincial collective agreement signed in 1998.

School districts across B.C. had been instructed to reduce class sizes in
Grades 1-3 to a maximum of 23 students. At the start of the 1999-2000
school year, however, the North Van school district did not have cnough
teachers to facilitate a region-wide reduction in class sizes.

Asa result, many primary pupils in North Vancouver had a chaotic start
to the year, with several on waiting lists for their local elementary school,
and others reshuffled as the school board cried to comply as much as pos-
sible with the stipulations of the collective agreement.

The ministry, meanwhile, insisted the schoo! district had miscalculated
in its applications for funding.

“We didn’t much care who was at fault,” North couver Teacher's

See Parent page§

Hurricane hits News pages

‘HURRICANE’ Helen Kelesi /
makes her debut as a health and

fimess columnist in today’s

News sports section.

_ The former world-ranked tennis pro,

who is now a personal fitness trainer, will

appear regularly in the Sunday sports

pages. Kelesi broke into the women’s

Ha rvest seeks hi om e professional tennis tour at age 15 and
; worked her way up to a 10th place world

. ranking. Now 30, Kelesi coaches the

HARVEST Project founders David and Emiko Foster are faced with having to find a new home for women’s national tennis team and pro-

their North Shore charitable organization. North Vancouver City plans to redevelop the east vides colour commentary for tourna- FORMER world-ranked
Esplanade site. See story page 5. ments on TSN. See page 44. tennis star Helen Kelesi.

NEWS photo Miko Waketield