The mission of Colville Lake DEA is to provide a safe and caring school environment where students will have the opportunity to become lifelong learners with good critical thinking skills and healthy self-esteem.
The Colville Lake District Education Authority plays a significant role in formulating policies that guide decision-making processes impacting student success, well-being, and the quality of education provided by Colville Lake School. These policies are crafted to reflect the community's voice and ensure the safe and efficient operation of the school.
Policy making is an extremely important process for a variety of reasons:
- Policy can provide an important link between the elected representatives of the parents and the staff who are hired to work on their behalf in the schools. The best policy voices the views of the community working collaboratively with their principal and staff. This is especially important in a cross-cultural context where differences in culture, experiences, values and expectations
may be present. - Policy, as a voice of the Education Authority, can serve to keep people informed about the beliefs, direction and goals of the Authority. For new staff and new Authority members, a survey of policy can be part of an effective orientation to the Authority and its work.
- Policy can provide stability and continuity in our schools. This too, is extremely important in schools where until very recently, change was the norm because of a highly transient staff.
- Policy can save time and effort. Written statements of intentions mean that "trails have already been made" that provide direction and guidance to the staff. With good policy in place, decisions can be made more quickly, with less debate, and the attention of both Authority members and staff can be focused on other areas and concerns.
The policies in this manual are broad guidelines that say what the District Education Authority wants to do, will do and why. Typically, policy is written in the following format:
Paragraph 1 Why is this policy necessary? (Rationale)
Paragraph 2 What’s this policy going to do?
Paragraph 3 How is this policy going to do it?
DEA policies are most often broad and affect the majority, often allowing room for administrative direction in the case of exceptions or special cases. However, some of the policies are "prescriptive" in that they tend to mix together what some might see separately as policy and procedures. This has been intentional as it is this mix that best communicates the wishes of our community over a wide range of topics.
It is the wish and the practice of the District Education Authority that proposals for new policies or changes to existing policies come from the community at large, parents, Authority members, staff and students. Comments or concerns are welcomed and can be addressed to either the chairperson, secretary treasurer or the school principal.
