Update to Pemberton Woods Neighbours 120922

December 9, 2022

GNS

We want to wish all of our neighbours a healthy and joyful holiday season and a very happy New Year!

Despite the onset of more wintery weather, our campus is certainly abuzz with end-of-term activity. The last day of classes before our Winter Break is December 16, with students being dismissed at noon on that day. Administrative staff will be on site until December 23, at which point the school will close until January 3, 2023. Except for some light use by community rental groups, the campus will remain pretty quiet throughout our break. Faculty and students will return on January 9 and 10.

Traffic

As mentioned last month, we continue to see more families using the newly implemented drop and walk zones that the City of Victoria put in place on Richardson and Gonzales and actively promote the use of these zones to our students and parents as a way of reducing traffic congestion during our drop off and pick up times. If you have questions or observations please share them with neighbours@mygns.ca or directly with the City of Victoria.

Bus ridership to and from school is also growing as we continue to encourage our families to look to alternate modes of transportation for getting to and from school.

We encourage our school families and our neighbours to please follow posted speed limits and to be aware of any pedestrian signage in order to keep our Gonzales community safe.

Service & Community Engagement – Hygiene and Warm Clothing Drive

GNS challenges our students to use their skills and awareness of public issues to help their communities and consider how they can make a difference. Recently, our Middle School Round Square students arranged for a representative from Our Place to present at an assembly to speak to the students about the challenges people who are experiencing homelessness face in our community. Inspired by this, our Round Square students are currently holding a ‘hygiene items and warm clothing’ drive to collect items like shampoo, soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste, socks, hats and coats to be given to Our Place. If you have items you would like to contribute, please contact Harvey Thorau at neighours@mygns.ca. The final collection date for this initiative is Wednesday, December 14.

As we continue to plan and participate in community service initiatives throughout the year, if you have any suggestions about other service opportunities for our students to volunteer in the community, or if you would like to be involved in future student-led service activities in our neighborhood, please email neighbours@mygns.ca.

Email Distribution List

As part of our commitment to improving communications with our neighbours, we encourage you to register for our neighbour email distribution list which we will use to send out these monthly updates. If you would like to be added to our email list, please email neighbours@mygns.ca.