Samedi 4 avril 2009
6
04
/04
/2009
06:43
The re-enrollment
period is over and we are honored that the vast majority of our current families are returning in the fall. However, for those of you who are relocating this summer, we wish you safe travels; to
our graduating seniors – may you have much success in college; for those facing financial difficulties – may the downturn be temporary; and to the remaining few – we hope the new school you have
chosen fulfills your child’s needs. No matter the reason for departing in June, thank you for the opportunity we have had to participate in your
child’s education.
Now, back on
topic!
As an academic
institution, LILA is foremost about learning, and we too continue to learn. For those of you who re-enrolled at the Elementary level, you may have noticed a cahier fee on your Agreement. This is not a new fee, but rather just a new way of collecting the fee to make it easier on both the parents and the
administrators. This fee is usually collected at the beginning of the year and now by adding it to our Agreement it will not only save time and money
but it becomes a reimbursable expense for our French families receiving the French bourse. This fee covers both cahiers and French novels for elementary students only. For now, secondary students will continue to purchase their cahiers and French novels in September.
LILA’s program has
always required the use of authentic French notebooks (cahiers) and novels which we have imported from France each year. In previous years, some of
you were fortunate enough to import them independently, either by taking advantage of a trip to France or asking friends and relatives to bring them for you. Most LILA parents didn’t have this
ability or they preferred to use their precious suitcase allowance for more tasty items, so to normalize and streamline the process, we changed our policy three years
ago.
A little history:
internally, the ‘cahier’ process has evolved. Parents who have been here for years will remember the long lines in the sun waiting to buy the
individual cahiers or heavy bundles during the first week of school, and then taking them all home to cover, label, store until needed, and then
watching as their little ones returned them in a laden backpack (often bigger than themselves). And they will, unfortunately, probably remember the frustrating delay when their child lost a
cahier or filled one up and they had to get a replacement quickly. Or Heaven forbid, if the teacher made a mistake and ordered the wrong one and
everyone had to wait for the new ones to come from France. Worst yet for those of you who bought your own based on a list provided in June and then were sometimes greeted with the news that a
teacher was replaced over the summer and the new teacher had different needs so, due to the urgency, you had to buy ones from LILA after all… more expensive in the
end.
Teachers and parents
alike demanded a solution!
A few years ago the
decision was made to place all cahiers in all Elementary classrooms before the start of school. Parents and teachers raved about the improvement! It
was convenient, efficient, and assured that students had the necessary cahiers from Day #1 so there wasn’t any downtime in the classroom. However, we
have found that the administrative work lasts throughout each school year.
In an effort to
proactively minimize the back-to-school confusion, we decided to include the cahier fee upfront on the 2009-2010 Agreements for all Elementary
students, which also benefits families. Since the purchase of cahiers is mandatory anyway, including
them on the Agreement allows parents to include the expense in their SMART account.
The individual
cahier prices are the same as years past. Logically, it costs more to buy them from LILA than it would if you were fortunate and could buy them off
the shelf in France. What are some of the determining factors for this difference?
§ shipping and handling costs are the major cause, almost doubling
the price;
§ due to the ordering and delivery schedule, teachers must
estimate their needs 6 to 8 months in advance - before they have seen how many cahiers they will actually use in the current year; some teachers end
up over-ordering while others under-order;
§ teachers switch grade assignments from one year to the next,
after ordering;
§ fluctuations in the exchange rate for the
Euro;
§ due to the distance, we must purchase for full classes as there
isn’t enough time for a second delivery otherwise;
§ we include a margin of extras to cover lost cahiers or curriculum modifications;
§ although justified, the associated administrative expenses to
organize, order, distribute, store, invoice, and collect for cahiers and French novels are not
added.
This brings us to the
quantity concern. The 2009-10 cahier bundle price represents an average based on the past few years of actual ordering on all campuses. It is our
goal to continue monitoring the consumption of cahiers; having them on-site makes it easier to determine how many a student actually needs at each
grade level. The pedagogical team is coordinating efforts to minimize waste and to normalize the use of cahiers on all campuses. In the past the four
LILA Elementary campuses had different policies for the cahiers and French novels. With this new LILA-wide practice, this discrepancy will be
eliminated as all Elementary campuses will follow the same policy – one fee, covering all cahiers and French novels, is included on the Agreement and
the material will be distributed before classes resume in September and throughout the school year as needed. Teachers will still have flexibility and the pedagogical coordinators will be more
involved without micromanaging. When we set the cahier fee for the 2010-11 school year we will
definitely adjust the fee to reflect the 2009-10 usage.
Bottom line: all students will have
what they need in class when they need it!
