Principal's Report

Congratulations Mr Young

Last week Dave was appointed to the Acting Principal position at Lucas Primary School for terms 2, 3 and 4.  After doing an excellent job as principal at Delacombe primary school for much of 2022, Dave was always a likely candidate, and we know he’ll do the same for Lucas PS this year.  We are currently working through a process to backfill the Assistant Principal (Teaching and Learning) role and should have more information for you this time next week.

School Review – Parent Forums

We are currently going through a school review which is a process that takes place in all state schools every 4 years.  The purpose of the review is to build a picture of the current state of play and then develop a plan for the next 4 years.

An important part of the process is the development of a self-evaluation.  The self-evaluation looks at school performance over the life of the current Strategic Plan (the last 4 years), identifying strengths, weaknesses and highlights.

To inform the self-evaluation, we seek feedback from staff, students and parents.  Over the past month our weekly staff meetings have featured workshops designed to capture the views of staff, and these have been very useful.  Last week we started the process of running student focus groups with students.  These are always enlightening, and we look forward to running more of those this week.

The next step is to run some parent forums to gather the views of parents and carers.  We have arranged the following forums and would like to invite interested parents to attend and share their thoughts. Your feedback is important to us! 

Wednesday March 29 at 2.30pm - Buninyong Campus Staff Room

Thursday March 30 at 9am - Buninyong Campus Staff Room

Thursday March 30 at 2.30pm - Scotsburn Campus Old Building

Thursday March 30 at 7.30pm 

(Webex) https://eduvic.webex.com/eduvic/j.php?MTID=m24122eb6873e99fd2b3edde3785c88a8

The forums will last around 30 min and the times have been chosen to give anyone interested the opportunity to participate.

We are looking forward to gaining a parent perspective on what makes Buninyong PS a great place and what can be improved for the future.

Ride to School Day

It was a pity that the weather caused us to put a hold on Ride to School Day last Friday.  The showers were looking likely to continue, and we didn’t want lots of kids soaked at the start of a school day.  Those with bikes still loved the opportunity to have a ride around on the basketball court at the Buninyong Campus at recess and lunch times. 

We’ll give it another go on the last day of term and hopefully the weather will be better.  We’ll run with the same plans and aim to meet up at 8:20am out the front of the school.  Scotsburn students will be starting the day at Buninyong, so are welcome to join in the fun.

Casual Dress Day to Finish Off the Term

As always, we like to finish off the term with a casual dress day.  Students are invited to come along in casual dress and bring a gold coin donation.  As is tradition, the funds raised go to an external beneficiary and last week our VOTS students met to consider who that might be.  After some great discussion, they decided the money would be donated to the Ballarat Animal Shelter.

Cable Reels

A number of years ago we had some large cable reels donated and they have been very popular pieces of play equipment ever since.  One of those reels is tired after being climbed over and stood on multiple times every day and is ready to be replaced.  If anyone knows where we could maybe source a few of these to replace existing reels, please let me know.