Director Myles, thank you for that first-class summary of our accomplishments for 2020. Without a doubt, our Board has come a long way this past year resulting from our diligent work and your strong, effective leadership in guidance of your dedicated team. I might also say that it is particularly noteworthy that these advances have been accomplished fully within the course of a disruptive pandemic which has certainly one been of the most serious societal challenges we have ever experienced.

Trustees, our Director has provided you with clear evidence of our accomplishments for the past year. I want to take a brief moment to project our major challenges for the year ahead. They can be summarized in six major areas:

• Multi-Year Strategic Plan
• Student Achievement & Wellbeing
• Two New School builds – Fricker Elementary and Parry Sound K-12
• Board Resources Reorganization
• North Bay Capital Property Assets Utilization
• High School Athletic Facilities

These challenges can be broadly summarized in terms of our most significant challenge – the completion of a Multi-Year Strategic Plan which was initiated in the fall of 2020 and we intend to complete by the end of this school year in June. This document will provide the direction we operate and thus provide a compass and guard rails for our Board for the 5 years ahead – 2021 to 2026.

Closely aligned with this challenge is the continual responsibility of Student Achievement and Wellbeing improvement.  This is the major function of our school system.

Within our MYSP context, we have the challenge of two new schools builds – Fricker Elementary and K-12 Parry Sound School. Fricker is moving forward and we will soon appoint an architect for Parry Sound.

We have much work to complete regarding Board Resources Reorganization as we are committed to have the right people in the right place to obtain the right results.

Within a relativity short period, we will have three empty schools in North Bay thus need to review the utilization of North Bay Capital Property Assets to ensure we are continually responding to challenges of declining enrollment and fiscal stewardship.

Also, within this context, we need to put the finishing touches on our successful high school consolidation with possible Phase III enhancements resulting from an important review of High School Athletic Facilities to ensure they align with our physical education goals.