VCI Engagement Committee 
meeting with community 
Thursday, January 17
Re: new high school building for the community:

A WORD OF EXPLANATION:
The January 17 meeting consisted of two parts: a slide presentation by Upper Canada District School Board chief information and facilities officer Jeremy Hobbs (at right) about the different locations being considered by the board for construction of the new Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute building, followed by an opportunity for the people attending the meeting to ask questions and then discuss amongst themselves, the various options and whether or not they supported them.

We apologize for the poor sound quality of this presentation, especially during this first slide. For some reason the Upper Canada District School Board’s spokesperson at the meeting – chief information officer, Jeremy Hobbs – decided not to use the microphone to address the people who had come out to this VCI Engagement Committee meeting with the community.

Hobbs decided not to use the microphone in spite of the fact that a full public address system had been set up in the VCI gymnasium – complete with large speakers – to help people hear what was being said in a very reverberant room.

For this reason Hobbs' opening remarks are very muddy and hard to understand. We have transcribed that portion of his presentation below (to the best of our ability) so that you can follow along.

Hear UCDSB Chief Information and Facilities Officer Jeremy Hobbs' "off-mic" opening remarks.

"Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to come back - it’s really nice to be here in a different kind of environment than there was on November 19.

It’s certainly a nice opportunity for us to restart the process and hopefully do all the kinds of things with the community up front, that we want to do and should have done the last time around.

Our opening strategy had been, really. . . that option we put on the table earlier in the fall, to move you to Glengarry (District High School) and to demolish (the) VCI (building).

What we want to do, as we promised on November 19, is come back to you and really put all the options on the table that we saw as being the big viable options that we felt were worth considering.

We want to really treat this as a community consultation. No one knows the community better than the community itself. We wanted to have the opportunity to hear some feedback on some of the options, and potentially look at some options, perhaps, that we hadn’t considered, that might be feasible as well.

So tonight I put a little presentation together to go through with you some of our thinking and some of these options – really, as you can see – we want to treat it as a conversation starter.

I have no intention, tonight, of deciding where the school should be built for example, but we really want to start the conversation and then move through the process.

(makes joke about starting construction project by ordering a larger screen for his slide presentation)

So the intent of my presentation -- what I wanted to do was talk to you a little bit about some of the assumptions and some of the constraints that we are working with. . .

Review photo galleries (with sound) from the 
Jan 17 meeting at VCI

See and hear Hobbs' entire power point presentation from the Jan 17, meeting

See and hear participants' reactions to the options presented at the Jan 17 meeting

Review articles about the Jan 17 meeting

By Louise Sproule

VANKLEEK HILL – Two questions – where and when – predominated the first of a series of community consultations about the new $10.8- million Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute (VCI) which took place Thursday evening (January 17) in the school 
gymnasium. . .>>

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The community is being asked for 
feedback on two proposals for the new VCI

At a January 17 meeting a UCDSB spokesperson presented six options regarding the proposed site for the new Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute. The VCI Engagement Committee, made up of school staff and members of the community, is asking for your input on those options. . .>>

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What has to happen in the coming months

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The Upper Canada District School Board will oversee a project steering committee, which consists of board chair Greg Pietersma, local trustee Sherri Moore, associate director Ian Carswell, chief financial officer Rick Gales, chief information and facilities officer Jeremy Hobbs and superintendent Ted Kennedy. . .>>

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By Louise Sproule

VANKLEEK HILL – "Quit this flip-flopping and get on with the job. That’s what my mother used to say." That is what an impatient Robert Kirby told Upper Canada District School Board chief information and facilities officer Jeremy Hobbs as a small group gathered around Hobbs to continue the discussions launched earlier in the evening, during the first community consultation on the new $ 10.8-million Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute (VCI). . .>>

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