Principal's 

Message

WHERE CHILDREN LOVE TO BE

LONG SERVICE LEAVE

After 40 years of service in the Education Department, I have come to a stage in my career where I would like to take a greater portion of my long service leave.  Specifically, I am taking every Monday and Friday as Long Service, working a three-day week during Term 2.  I am very much looking forward to spending more time with my family.  Matthew Vines is stepping up as acting principal and we have employed John Painter, Assistant Principal of Hampton Primary School as the acting assistant principal on the days that I am not at work. John is a very experienced assistant principal and is looking forward to working at South Melbourne Park.  

 

VISUAL ARTS PROGRAM OFFERED FOR THREE TERMS IN THE YEAR

At South Melbourne Park we are ‘a step ahead’ and we believe in allowing students to embrace their passions and experience a wide range of subjects and curriculum areas to spark their curiosity. This is why, as a school, we invest heavily in our diverse and extensive specialist program. You may be aware that most schools will offer three, sometimes four, specialist subjects at the most. At South Melbourne Park Primary, we have Physical Education, Performing Arts, STEM and Spanish. Furthermore, we have made the conscious decision to keep class sizes as low as possible. The way that we have been able to afford providing all these amazing opportunities for our students is to keep the Visual Art program to three terms in the year, where each class has one term where they do not have Visual Arts. For Term 1 this was the prep team, and for Term 2 this will be the multi-age students. The decision to have Visual Art as the subject that was on a rotational basis was also due to the needs of our teaching staff at the time. 

 

Our intention for 2022 and onward is for Visual Art to be the same as all our other specialists and be every term for all students, but these financial decisions schools need to make are always based on the enrolment numbers and funding we have available.

 

We are very happy with how this program is going, and we know that the students have been loving their Visual Art lessons with Ms Michael and we are looking forward to all the creativity we will see from the students over the year!

 

SCHOOL COUNCIL SUBCOMMITTEES

School Council is supported by subcommittees, we have several vacancies in the subcommittees below.  If you would like to become involved, please contact the school. There are eight meetings in the year.

  • Strategic Planning & Engagement (meets Tuesday at 6:30PM virtually)
  • Environment & Facilities (meets Wednesday at 6:30PM virtually)
  • Student Wellbeing (meets TBC)
  • Sponsorship (meets Wednesday 11:30am virtually)

FAMILIES & FRIENDS THANK YOU

A huge thank to Families & Friends for organising the recent Bunnings BBQ. We are very grateful for donations of supplies and to the parents who gave up their Saturday cooking sausages. It was a successful fundraiser, raising $1837 towards the school playground equipment.  Another thank you to the parents who supported the Hot Cross Bun drive, this activity raised $335.  We are making a great start to 2021 fundraising target of $20,000.  The next huge fundraiser on Families & Friends calendar is the Walkathon on Monday April 26. Students have been given their sponsorship forms, I hope the students take the opportunity over the Easter break to seek sponsors from their extended family.

 

END OF TERM

This is our last newsletter for Term 1.  We return back to school on Monday April 19 to start Term 2.  Thank you to the teachers for all your work, and for having ‘kids at heart’. It has been a busy term and a great start to the year. Some highlights of term include the formation of the new student executive, buddies’ program, Australia Institute of Sport STEM Program, Families & Friends Welcome Picnic, school photos, Parent Information Nights and Q&A sessions, Getting to Know You interviews.  Next term we look forward to our swimming program, Year 4-6 Camp and many other activities. 

 

Happy Easter holiday everyone!