a history of curriculum services canada

The exploration of cost-saving initiatives was also a major focus of attention. In April, the
Executive Director attended a conference on The Learning Partnership, directed at strategies for
developing partnerships. The point was made that business in general has very little
understanding of the educational world, an indication that education about education would be a
very important strategy for OCC in its future negotiations with business.
A meeting with the Director of the Independent Learning Centre raised the possibility of sharing
office and administrative space in future, as a way for both organizations to reduce expenses. In
a similar attempt to minimize future costs, a review of database management systems was also
initiated with the goal of finding the most appropriate system for OCC. Changing the format of
OCC’s Annual General Meeting in June from that of a retreat to a regular Board meeting was
another attempt to minimize operating expenses. Ongoing changes in OCC’s structure also led
to savings in the area of human resources.
April brought the next stage of the development process of The Evaluator with a project on bias
proofing initiated with the First Folio Resource Group Inc., a company staffed by teachers in the
field of curriculum development.
Also in April encouraging letters of support for OCC arrived, including one from the Deputy
Minister, Veronica Lacey. Such feedback reflected the ongoing hard work that OCC continued
to exhibit.
May and June continued with many promotional activities as well as the more pressing drive to
find new directors. Letters were sent to over 30 educational associations requesting that OCC be
placed on their conference workshop agendas for the fall. Press releases announcing The
Evaluator went to every English school board and Faculty of Education, and to other educational
groups across Canada. Several conferences were attended with OCC displays included. As
well, an important link was made with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Education, with
The Evaluator being given full support and promotion in the faculty’s workshops and courses.
Essex County and Northumberland-Clarington Boards also adopted The Evaluator as their
standard of excellence in curriculum development, and the Peel board showed its support by
ordering 200 sets of worksheets for their evaluation process. Other boards beginning to show
interest in OCC were Simcoe County and Northumberland-Newcastle.
By June, two new Associate Members representing the corporate sector had been appointed to
the Board - Ayman Antoun of IBM and Tom Strong of CIBC. Both new members had
demonstrated long-time support for public education and recognized the need to develop
stronger ties between education and business.
Throughout the summer, a team of experienced teacher educators met with OCC and developed
a plan for a series of workshops entitled “Reaching Curriculum Standards,” based upon the
guidelines of the Evaluator. A pilot presentation of these workshops was planned for October,
with the Durham Board of Education offering to host the event. The idea was to have the
workshops re-evaluated by outside educators and to further discuss design and marketing issues.
1997
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