Board Chair Randy Hildebrand

Hanover School Trustees have taken another step in updating some of the guiding statements they use to oversee the school division.  Board Chair Randy Hildebrand says over the last couple of years the board has been asking how best to move ahead.  "One of the ways of doing that is taking a look at our policies.  We have a governance committee now that is taking us through that.  We are very systematically, over our four year term, going to make sure that we're looking at every single policy that we as a school division have.  So at this week's board meeting we started working at five or six different policies."

He adds this process will continue until all policies have been reviewed by this board.  "Right now there are between 35 and 40 policies and we want to look at those over four years.  So it's not a one time thing, it's not over a couple of months but every four years."

Hildebrand says he is excited about this process.  "It's new for the us and it's very structured now but I think it is manageable.  So today was one of those days when we started looking at those policies.  We have it in place where we need to do first and second readings so it gives us time.  There is no rush on this.  It gives us an opportunity to systematically look at how we are doing, why we are doing what we are doing and how we move ahead."

He admits this policy handbook has been on the shelf for a while.  "We are finding some policies that hadn't been revisited from the 80's and the 90's and we know that it's time.  We are starting to deal with the ones that we need to deal with now and we will eventually get through all of that.  And again the structure is now in place where every policy will get looked at every four years so we don't repeat what has been done in the past."