School District 47 has established an advisory group to make improvements and development at the outdoor learning centre at Haywire Bay on Powell Lake.
At the December 15 Powell River Board of Education meeting, superintendent of schools Jay Yule said it was time to establish the group. He said the outdoor learning centre was built in 2013 with a grant from the Island Coastal Economic Trust as an extension of the Sunshine Coast Trail.
“We thought it was time to bring people together to talk about programming and how the outdoor learning centre operates,” said Yule. “Right now, we have school priority for the programming, but we also want to generate revenue to make sure it is cost-neutral in terms of running. That was one of the goals when we started so we are going to bring people together to talk about what that should look like in the future.
“The first step will be the centre and the operations and programming there, and the second task will be general outdoor learning across the district and trying to put some coherent structure around that. We are proud of the number of programs we have but I think it’s really time to put some structure around it, which is the intention of this advisory group.”
According to terms of reference established for the group, when the centre was established, the school district viewed it as an opportunity to generate revenue, but more importantly, to build outdoor programming. The terms of reference stated the outdoor learning centre has been successful in meeting the learning agenda for the school district and has been moderately successful in revenue generation.
