Welcome to 2021! It is wonderful to welcome several new families to the College, and of course, to have our continuing families with us. We are excited for a new year and to see the students settling into their new classes and routines. We also have a number of College procedures for parents and visitors. In order to ensure awareness of these, please familiarise yourself with the following information:

Car Park Reminders

Please be reminded the car park is a shared space, and is often crowded in the afternoons at pick-up time. Be patient - it is only 15-20 minutes of busyness each day. In order to ease congestion and keep traffic moving, please adhere to the following:

Follow the arrows, park only in the marked bays with the vehicle’s nose facing in, or collect passengers from the drop off zone.
When you enter the gate, ONLY go straight ahead. Please do not turn right to park in the BUS ONLY zone or to drive through the car parks at the end of the pedestrian islands.
Students may only be collected from in front of A Block or B Block. No students are permitted to wait on the pedestrian islands. These areas are checked regularly and students will be sent back to the correct waiting zones.
Please join the queue through the staff car park turn-around area to come to the drop off zone. Please do not exit against the arrows. Other vehicles are waiting to enter.
Please do not pull in front of other vehicles in the drop off zone. It will only take a few minutes in the queue.
Please continue to move as far forward as possible to allow more vehicles to collect their passengers behind you. Vehicles should not be left unattended in the drop off zone.
When you park in a bay, please only use the crossings to cross the car park. Model correct procedures to your children.
If you have children on both North and South campuses, please ask the Year 10-12s to be collected from South. Please do not cross between campuses during the morning or afternoon peak periods.
Please be reminded that there are no staff on duty until 8:35am. We request that you avoid dropping your children off before this time.

We are continually mindful of student safety as our main priority during morning drop off and afternoon collection. We appreciate your support and patience, particularly during the busy afternoon time.

Mask-Wearing Regulations

Under the current government regulations, all Secondary students aged 12 years and over, and all adults, must wear a mask when indoors, unless an exemption applies. For students, this will be considered a uniform requirement, and monitored as such.

If your child has an exemption, please notify the appropriate Head of School: Joel Williamson for Junior Secondary and Sharyn Hadlow for Senior Secondary.

For visitors, please wear a mask when entering indoor spaces, or advise staff if an exemption applies.

Proactive Partnerships

If you need to contact your child/ren's teacher for any reason, please use their email to arrange an appropriate meeting (use: firstname.lastname@baysidecc.vic.edu.au). Just before Home Group each morning, most teachers are getting organised for the day, so please allow them to do this in order to have the best preparation for classes, and make another time.

If you have any concerns, or just want to speak with a teacher, please refer to the classroom teacher in Primary, or the subject teacher in Secondary as the first contact. The Coordinators and Heads of School may be contacted as communicated from the particular sub-schools.

New School Management System

The College is currently in transition from using Edumate as the School Management System, to a new system called Sentral. Unfortunately the transfer of data during Term 4 of last year and over the holidays did not run as smoothly as we'd hoped. For this reason, Edumate is no longer active, but Sentral is also not quite ready for student or parent access. Student timetables and information is available for staff to access at this time. We will provide more information as soon as we are sure the parent and student modules will work as intended. We thank you for your patience and encourage you to contact the main office if you need any assistance.

Parent Conferences

Our Primary Parent-Teacher conferences and Secondary Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences will take place on Tuesday 9 and Wednesday 10 March. This is a wonderful opportunity to catch up and share our partnership to discuss the progress and plans for best supporting your children's education, both from school and from home. Information will be sent out in the next few weeks regarding how to use our online booking system, PTO, to make a time to meet with your children's teachers.

In response to parent feedback, Tuesday 9 March appointments will be online through Zoom from 9am to 8pm. This will be a student-free day. Wednesday 10 March will be a regular school day with on-campus (in person) appointments from 3:45pm to 8pm. Buses will run as normal this day. Camp Australia will provide care for those already registered with the program.

Once again, it is a blessing to have you with us at Bayside this year as we partner together in Christian education. May 2021 be a wonderful year for you all.

Toni Steinbergs

Deputy Principal

SchoolTV Special Report

Starting Year 7

Starting Year 7 poses many new challenges, but also offers exciting opportunities. It comes with a number of mixed feelings. Unfortunately for many Grade 6 students, 2020 was marred with school closures and remote learning due to the pandemic and the overall impact of this is still unknown...

From the Family Zone Blog

Family Zone: How to safely manage your child’s school device

Bayside Christian College News

2021 Issue 1 · 11 Feb 2021

In this issue