From the Principal 

WORKING BEE

THANK YOU

What a fantastic MPS working bee we had last Saturday. Thank you to Mr Houston and Mrs Baker and Ms Townsend who attended along with the following families; Kirks, Ubach/Mann, Jackson, Murrie, Bellsmith, Yong/Irwin, Mills, Lees, Jackson, Tame, Gigliotti, Tran, Thorne/Amad, Harper, Gunton, Amarasinghe, Rogers, Knowles/Honey and  Le Merle. I apologise if there was anyone else who missed the sign in sheet who came to help and, therefore, have not been acknowledged for their support. We achieved so much and the SAKG team are particularly delighted with the jobs that were completed, including preparation of a new area to drop off bulk supplies, garden beds trimmed back, olive trees trimmed and cleared, broken planter boxes removed to name a few.

COMPASS

This week all families will receive their log in details for our new school management system. Please make sure you read the letter carefully and log in with the temporary password that you have been allocated. You will then be required to change your password and confirm your email address. Instructions will be sent out via your child/children in a sealed envelope this Friday.

Please note: there is only one log in per family unless alternative families have already been set up by the school, in which case they will receive their own log in.

MPS will be running help sessions for anyone who is unsure how to log in on Monday June 4 at 6:00pm and Thursday morning June 7 at 9:00am in the IRC.

EVERY DAY COUNTS

Department of Education and Training (DET) has an initiative called, “Every Day Counts”. In essence the initiative involves 4 key aspects:

1. The importance of children attending school every day

2. Being at school on time.

3. Ensuring the school is notified of all absences (in advance or on the day)

4. If our school is not advised, then we must contact families.

As educators we are very aware of the importance of attending school every day and also arriving on time. The research is very clear, the more a child misses school, the greater the gap between their peers hence the importance of minimising absences.

Currently we have a large number of regular late arrivals and we are aiming to reduce that to zero. Our sign in system is for parent use only. Students must be accompanied to the office by a parent if they are late.

The Compass software package will be our main communication tool going forward, please install this on the weekend on your phone, tablet and/or PC and ensure you contact the school when/if your child is to be absent, arrives late or is to leave early. If our school is not informed of an absence, we will be sending families an SMS or email through Compass. Naturally this takes administrative time to complete, incurs additional costs and will also interrupt parents. Hence it is exceptionally important that we all work together with this issue. We will communicate further instructions on how to put absence notes into the compass system as we move forward.

Our first step is to ensure you all have logged in and have the system on your device.

Thanks

Lynne Foster