AP 411: Staff Meetings
Personnel & Employment
Background
Meeting and collaborating with the entire school staff on a regular basis is crucial to keeping all personnel up-to-date and moving forward together as a team. Regularly scheduled staff meetings provide opportunities for whole staff discussion, sharing, and feedback.
Staff meetings are most productive when all members of the staff have an opportunity to contribute.
Although staff meetings are excellent tools for communication, regular, written communication from the Principal, in the form of weekly updates or other communications is also important and encouraged.
Procedures
With respect to scheduling and notification:
1. As required, the principal shall endeavour to host staff meetings during Divisional non- instructional days;
1.1. In instances where the principal incorporates professional learning and business items in the staff meeting on non-instructional days, the principal shall endeavour to keep the business portion of the staff meeting to less than ninety (90) minutes.
2. Meetings may be scheduled by the principal as needed in instances where Divisional non- instructional days are scheduled too far apart for staff meeting needs;
2.1. Where feasible to do so, meetings that intend to bridge the gap between non- instructional days shall be added to the school calendar at the start of the year.
3. Infrequent meetings may be scheduled by the principal as deemed necessary for emergent items;
3.1. Meetings for emergent items shall be provided as much notification as possible; and
3.2. Notwithstanding significantly emergent items, meeting notification shall be provided at least one day in advance of the scheduled meeting.
With respect to meeting attendance and time:
4. Notwithstanding “Leaves” as defined in the Collective Agreement, Certificated staff are expected to attend all staff meetings.
4.1. When a teacher is absent from a meeting, it is the responsibility of that teacher to be informed about pertinent information covered during the meeting.
5. Meetings established as described in section 2 and/or section 3 shall not exceed an hour in length unless agreed upon by the majority of certificated staff.
6. Non-certificated staff may be expected to attend at the discretion of the principal and shall be compensated accordingly.
7. Notwithstanding voluntary attendance, part time teachers shall not be expected to attend meetings that do not occur in alignment with their schedule.
7.1. In accordance with section 4, staff meeting attendance by substitute teachers, or teachers on short term, temporary contracts shall be at the discretion of the principal as based on emergent need.
With respect to meeting agenda and meeting composition:
8. The principal shall consider the practice of distributed decision making to ensure that agendas are co-created with staff as prudent to do so.
9. One person shall agree to take minutes for the meeting to be shared in a reasonable and prudent amount of time.
9.1. Meeting minutes shall be retained according to AP: 580 – Division Record Management.
10. The principal or chair of the meeting shall endeavour to ensure that all staff members have an opportunity to share their perspective and have voice at the meeting.
Approved:
