Our 2020 Outlook for Okere Community School
On 21st January 2020, we held our first 2020 meeting with the parents of Okere Community Schools Early Childhood Development Centre to discuss important issues concerning the meaning of 2020 for the community school. The meeting also reviewed 2019 progresses and challenges and chattered a constructive way forward on how best engage to solidifying key milestones and improve on the challenges.
The meeting was chaired by Ojok Okello, the founder of Okere City project. In his remark, he stressed that Okere Community School’s work will in 2020 shall still be hinged on developing the community school as a center as of excellence for early childhood development in Otuke District and Northern Uganda in general.
During the meeting, there was a general consensus that smartness of the school children will be highly prioritized in 2020. This means that children should come to school when properly dressed in the school uniform with black shoes. Children should also come their hair is well kempt.
Ojok Okello also used the opportunity to highlight the bursary scheme which is a generous support from the friends of Okere City project to Sponsor-A-Child at the school. He reiterated that selection of children into the scheme would be a democratic, free and fair process. He explained that the selection process would be conducted through a raffle draw where parents will write the names of their children in a piece of paper and the pieces of papers will be equally folded and mixed-up and a local leader will be called upon to randomly selected a piece of paper. The child whose name is being shall be the lucky winner of the bursary scheme. The parents welcome the idea and indeed many said that the process will not make some parents feel left.
Parents also agreed on the realistic prices each of them should contribute towards payment of salaries for school teaching and non-teaching staff; and on food quantities per parent to prepare breakfast and lunch for the children. Unlike in the previous year when children left school at midday 12:00PM, the meeting also agreed that children will study up to 3:00PM meaning lunch will be provided at school, hence the need to supply enough food to feed the children during the entire team.
Among other new developments, it was also highlighted that the school kitchen a temporary hall where children will be learning from are being constructed. Two new teachers will also be recruited to support Teacher Florence who until Dec 2019 was a lone teacher and administrator of the school. A new classroom will be constructed during the year and children will start studying from there once the construction is concluded.
Parents also suggested that a strong PTA should be formed with members democratically elected by the parents on the Annual General Meeting which was slated to be held in the first week of February 2020. ‘’But the PTA to work effectively, there should be a manual to guide its operations’’ said Otim Anthony, one of the parents of the school. He also called upon the parents to support the school by bringing all the contributions required on time to allow for smooth operations of the school activities.
