Items:
- Message from Director General
- Bonfire Night
- Scholastic Book Club
- PTA News
Principal’s Message
Dear HIS Community
Good luck to all the runners who are participating in the Peace Marathon tomorrow. Also, thank you in advance to all the members of our HIS community who will be there to cheer them on. We have a busy period in our school year approaching. Next week, we have the accreditation team visiting HIS from Wednesday to Friday and also our Model United Nations students travelling to Korea. We are also getting ready for the Bonfire Night in a couple of weeks time, the Middle Years Program evaluation visit in December and of course Festive Eve as well. We will send you updates on all of these events aong the way. Enjoy the weekend.
Regards
Damian Rentoule (Principal)
Crane Video
Message from the Director General (HIS Board of Directors)
Greetings everyone. In this brief discussion, I will mention some of the things that were discussed in the Board of Directors’ meeting held on September 15, 2018. Apologies for the delay here, but we can only report on the minutes after they have been accepted by the members at the following meeting, which in this case was held on October 20, 2018.
As in all of our meetings, we have presentations from the Principal, the Treasurer and others. The Treasurer’s report is hard to convey in any meaningful way, as it changes from month to month due to changes in student enrollment numbers, incoming and outgoing staff costs, facility maintenance and repair costs, and so forth, but in general, the budget is stable at present. The Principal has reported on his own findings elsewhere, so I will move on to a couple of points that we focused on at the meeting.
One point was that the By-Laws need to be finalized—these were distributed to both boards for review, and it is our hope to approve them in their current form at the next BOD meeting in December. Along these lines, we have been told by the prefecture that our required membership numbers of both boards appear to be more than is necessary for a relatively small school such as HIS and that we should consider downsizing both. To this end, the Board of Directors (BOD) voted to reduce the number of members required for the BOD from 10 to 8, which in turn allows the Board of Trustees (BOT) membership to be lowered from 21 to 17. In the BOT, in particular, it has been very difficult to fill all slots in all categories, but the reduced numbers bring us into accordance with our present state of membership. These changes need to also be changed on the Act of Endowment, which then has to be approved by both the BOT and the BOD.
Other issues under discussion included some of the items included in the Rules for Employment for staff and other related staffing issues. A further ongoing issue is how much English language is used in the classroom, which was placed on the agenda for the October meeting, as well as the ongoing School Improvement Plan.
We hope you all are enjoying a pleasant Autumn, and look forward to seeing many of you at the school at some of the upcoming year-end functions.
Peter Skaer, Director General
Bonfire Night
Scholastic Book Club
HIS’ November Scholastic Book Club is up and running! This will be the last one before the winter holidays, but we will have more in 2019 as the interest this year has been fantastic.
Go to http://world-schools.
Some additional information and response to feedback, a few parents noticed that the prices were higher than some other online orders; however with the HIS Book Club, the shipping is already included (do the math, and you’ll see that the shipping can really add up) and the school does receive 20% of the collected fees to reinvest into the library.
This time all students will receive the order catalog, but we request that all orders and payment be made online, as the school will not be collecting money directly. The catalogue will be going home with your children over the next few days.
And finally, a huge thank you to to the parents who used to run this book club over the years, especially Eriko Shige-Hird, who helped me track down over $250 that the school is now able to use for books for your children.
Please place your order online by November 23rd, 2018.
Any questions can be directed directly to me at mjungblut@hiroshima-is.ac.jp . And again thank you to the dozens of families that made the previous order a success.
PTA News