🍎 2026 Extra Mile Awards for Teachers/Staff
Local Home and School Associations can consider nominating a school teacher/staff person for going the "extra mile" for students. The Federation is accepting nominations until Jan. 16. Find criteria and application at: https://peihsf.ca/extra-mile-award/
🍎 Resolutions drive real change
Together, parents and educators in Home and School help shape P.E.I.’s public education system through advocacy resolutions presented at the provincial Annual General Meeting. Resolutions serve as the single most important tool Home and School uses to influence change, with approved ones forwarded to the government requesting consideration of improvements that benefit all island students.
Key Impacts: Resolutions request collective action on pressing issues like inclusive
education, anti-bullying, equity, and resource needs, uniting parent and teacher voices to foster policy shifts.
Guidelines: Identify issues through discussions with local parents and teachers, then follow guidelines and examples at www.peihsf.ca/resolutions for writing and presenting clear, actionable resolutions.
Deadline: The submission deadline is Jan. 31. If you need help, contact the Federation office at peihsf@gov.pe.ca / 902-620-3186.
🍎 President’s Annual Reports 2025-26
Home and School Presidents are asked to submit their 2024-2025 annual reports to the Federation office by Feb. 28. Jeana MacIsaac, Office Assistant, will send last year’s reports to each president in early January. All reports will be compiled in the Federation’s Annual Book of Reports with copies distributed at the AGM and posted at https://peihsf.ca/agm/.
🍎 School Staff Appreciation Week, February 8-14
School Staff Appreciation Week is an opportunity for parents and students to recognize the dedication and hard work of school staff: teachers, administrative support, educational assistants, and custodians. Set up a small committee to brainstorm ways the school community can thank school staff. Keep plans simple!
🍎 AGM & Convention, Rodd Charlottetown Hotel
Our 73rd AGM will be held on Saturday, April 18, 2026. Ask parents and teachers to volunteer to attend and represent your local Home and School Association. Home & School Associations are urged to pay for delegates’ expenses (i.e., registration fee, gas, and hotel room). Book your hotel room Call the Rodd Charlottetown hotel to book rooms at:
Each local may send up to five voting members, but can sponsor as many as would like to attend. Registration details will be available in February, posted at: http://peihsf.ca/agm
🍎 Federation Board Nominations
Leading up to the AGM, the PEI Home and School Federation will be seeking nominations for the positions: President, Vice President, and Directors for Charlottetown Rural, Colonel Gray, Kinkora, Montague, and Morell families of schools; all are two-year term positions. https://peihsf.ca/agm/ Contact: peihsf@gov.pe.ca or 902-620-3186.
🍎 Messages from Public Schools Branch Trustees
Charlottetown, Zone 5 = Wishing all students, families, and staff a healthy and uplifting New Year. We extend our sincere appreciation for your continued dedication and support. As your Zone 5 Trustees, we remain steadfast in our commitment to collaboration, advocacy, and student success. We encourage you to join the next Public School Board Trustee Meeting either in-person at Stratford Town Hall on January 8th at 7:30 p.m. or online via website at Board Meetings and Minutes | Public Schools Branch. May the year ahead bring progress, connection, and possibility for our entire school community. Andrew (amacfarlane@edu.pe.ca) & Gaylene (gcarragher@edu.pe.ca).
Bluefield, Zone 4: Happy New Year, everyone! I’m Karen Clare, and I’m honoured to take on my Trustee role to listen, represent, and advocate for the Bluefield Family of Schools. I also look forward to connecting with our community as we support our students throughout the school year. Karen (kclare@edu.pe.ca
The following column is written by David Schult, President of the P.E.I. Home and School Federation, for The Guardian and is published on the first Saturday of the month during the school year. David lives in Charlottetown with his wife and two children, who attend UPEI and Colonel Gray Senior High School.
Help make resolutions reality: P.E.I. Home and School Federation helps create safe spaces for learning
Every New Year, we make resolutions we hope will change our lives. On Prince Edward Island, there is a quieter kind of resolution that changes children’s lives – resolutions debated and passed each spring at the Home and School Federation’s annual general meeting. These ten resolutions, drafted around kitchen tables and school gyms, have shaped everything from what children eat at lunch to how their personal data is protected online.
Over the past decade, Home and School resolutions proved that well researched, community driven ideas can become provincial policy. The clearest example is the Healthy School Food Program, first advanced in a 2015 resolution calling for a universal free school lunch program. That single idea sparked a sustained advocacy effort that helped lead to the creation of the non profit PEI School Food Program Inc., which served 886,625 meals in Public Schools Branch schools in 2024–25 and was highlighted in both the Premier’s throne speech and ministerial mandate letters.
Other resolutions moved just as quickly.
PROTECTING SCHOOL CHILDREN
In 2024, Home and School members raised alarm about children’s screen time, pointing out that PEI youth were averaging eight hours of screen use per day, four times the national recommendations. A resolution calling for a policy on screen use in primary schools prompted the Chief Public Health Office to endorse the initiative and the Department of Education and Early Years to begin developing guidelines for student screen time in classrooms, turning a parental concern into concrete policy within a year.
In 2025, a very different kind of crisis galvanized families: the major PowerSchool cybersecurity incident exposed sensitive records for more than 70,000 islanders. A resolution on protecting student, parent, and teacher personal data demanded mandatory technical safeguards like encryption and multi factor authentication, penalties for non compliance, data minimization, and stricter vetting of third party providers against federal privacy standards. By insisting that lessons be learned from a painful breach, parents signaled that digital safety and trust in public systems are now central to children’s well being.
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
Some victories are about life and death preparedness. A 2016 resolution asked the government to fund automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in all Island schools, recognizing that early access to an AED can be the difference between life and death in a cardiac emergency. When the province later announced funding to place these devices in schools, the Federation rightly pointed to that resolution as a catalyst for a safety investment that benefits students, staff, and the wider community that uses school facilities.
Other resolutions have tackled the very structure of the education system. In 2018, members called for a revision of the Education Act and a return to an elected school board, arguing that a system run by appointed members lacked democratic accountability. While the government initially declined the idea, by December 2020 the province committed to reinstating school boards with elected representatives, demonstrating how persistent, principled advocacy works.
Health and safety inside school walls have also been front and center. After the troubled renovation of Three Oaks Senior High School, including the removal of asbestos without proper protocols and disruptions that shortened the school year, a 2019 resolution pressed for strict guidelines on school renovation and construction. It called for public consultation, safe hazardous material removal, air quality testing, and controls on noise, helping ensure that future projects protect both student health and learning time.
ONGOING RESOLUTIONS
More recently, families have used resolutions to respond to daily realities in classrooms and online. A 2025 resolution on behaviour resource support urged the Department to add at least 0.5 full time equivalent student behaviour intervention positions to school staffing, drawing on the Positive Behaviour Intervention Supports model to create safer, calmer learning environments. Another 2025 resolution endorsed Canada’s proposed Online Harms Act (Bill C 63), aligning PEI parents with a national push to hold social media companies accountable for reducing children’s exposure to sexual exploitation and content that promotes self harm.
Climate change and road safety have not been ignored. A 2024 resolution asked that extreme heat, defined using a Humidex over 35 degrees, be added to school cancellation criteria so that policies reflect new environmental risks to student health.
Ongoing resolutions on school bus safety, including a 2018 call for two license plates on all PEI vehicles to improve enforcement, reflect a long standing commitment to making sure that the ride to and from school is as safe as the classroom itself. And in 2021, the Home and School Federation worked to improve school bus safety and heard concerns about vehicles continuing to pass parked buses as students enter and exit. The decision was made to bring key stakeholders together to discuss the issues and actions to prevent potential accidents.
CREATING CHANGE
Taken together, these ten issues – food security, screen use, data protection, AEDs, democratic governance, safe renovations, behaviour supports, online harms, heat safety, and bus safety – show the quiet power of resolutions written by ordinary Islanders. They started as ideas in local Home and School meetings and grew into provincial programs, legal reforms, and system wide practices that touch every child.
As January invites people to set personal goals for the year ahead, Home and School members across PEI are drafting a different kind of resolution: one they will bring to the Federation’s AGM in April. There, local resolutions will be debated, refined, and voted on, with the potential to become the next wave of change that improves education and well being for all Island children.
If you have children in an island public school, you are a member of a local Home and School organization. Visit the Home and School Federation website and learn how to write an amazing resolution, present it to your local Home and School and submit it to the Federation to discuss at our April AGM.
Will your resolution focus on solving bullying, child predators, funding for school playgrounds, best uses for AI? You can make the change you want to see for our children’s future. Together we build better schools.
Shirley Smedley Jay
Executive Director
P.E.I. Home and School Federation
PO Box 1012 Charlottetown PEI C1A 7M4
(40 Enman Crescent Rm 121 Charlottetown PEI C1E 1E6)
902-620-3186 / 902-218-8916
https://twitter.com/peihsf
https://www.facebook.com/peihsf
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