Academic Excellence
West Vancouver is the highest achieving school district in BC and is recognized for its academic excellence and innovation across Canada. Ensuring we continue to build on these successes comes from creating and stewarding a work place and culture that attracts and retains the best educators.
Attracting staff who are agile, aren’t afraid to innovate and are proactively looking for ways to evolve curriculum is paramount to preparing West Vancouver students for the future.
Ensuring numeracy and literacy rates in West Vancouver Schools are the best in the country will always be my foremost priority. That starts with hiring the very best educators and is possible through an innovative culture and deep community connections. Great people attract other great people to support student success.
Action Plan:
- Focus on, and support, student transitions from pre-school to Kindergarten, elementary to high school, and into their post-secondary careers.
- Ensure high academic standards are met across all grade levels.
- Expand a culture of innovation and create opportunities around AI, robotics, cyber security, and technology.
- Nurture a district-wide culture within schools that attracts and retains the best educators.
- Advocate provincially for greater student supports within schools.
- Deepen relationships with the community and rights holders across West Vancouver, Bowen Island, and Lions Bay.
Pathways for Every Kind of Success
Every student deserves an individualized educational path. West Vancouver Schools has illustrated that inclusive education is about pathways for all students, whether that is academic, trade-oriented, athletic, creative, cognitive, or cultural. Our students deserve exposure to a broad a range of opportunities and programs, so that when they find what ignites their “spark" they can find success.
West Vancouver Schools has been a leader in creating those pathways through its Academic Excellence, Sports Academies, Entrepreneurship Program, Carpentry and Culinary programs, Honour Choir, FAST program, and its commitment to consistently funding student support services at levels that exceed provincial funding level ensuring strong educational supports for students with diverse learning needs and those with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs).
Developing a diverse and varied set of skills and experiences creates balanced students that are future-ready and able to take full advantage of the opportunities they encounter after graduation.
Action Plan:
- Identify teacher passions and skills and nurture them into new opportunities for students as done with the creation of Robotics Academy and Quantum/Cybersecurity programs
- Collaborate with others to create new opportunities for student careers such as the Carpentry and Culinary Arts programs
- Support expansion of our sports academies beyond the current eight sports supporting student athletes
- Encourage creation of new programs such as youth entrepreneurship (YELL), arts, (Honour Choir, Yoga Academy, Photography) and applied skills (Mechanics, Wood Working, FAST)
- Continue to prioritize funding of student support services beyond provincial levels for students with IEPs and in need of additional educational and mental health support
Future Ready Citizens
West Vancouver Schools prioritizes and focuses on preparing our students for the future. The 1990s saw the advent of the Internet, the early 2000s the advent of social media, and now we are seeing Artificial Intelligence transform our world. West Vancouver students are diverse, globally connected, and digital natives.
We have a responsibility to build an educational platform oriented around career readiness, global readiness, and technological readiness — preparing students for careers, countries, and technologies that don't exist yet.
90% of the jobs of the future don't exist today. It is only through a proactive, intentional, and innovative mindset across our school district, that we can instill the values and skills our children will need to navigate a world none of us can predict.
Action Plan:
- Provide career support services for students with ambitions in Canada and beyond
- Explore how alumni can re-engage West Vancouver Schools and share their experience with students embarking on their post-secondary career
- Take a controlled, but progressive, approach to new technology and identifying how it enhances the education in our school system
- Steward the appropriate, value-adding integration of technology in schools and ensure the ethical use of tools like artificial intelligence
