Principal's Report

In this week’s newsletter:

Appreciations and News

• Welcome Back
• Child Safety 
• Phone lines have been down
• Brooke's Baby News
• Farewell Sandra
• National Assessment Program - Literacy & Numeracy (NAPLAN) 2025
• Swim Program
• Staff Leave
• Facilities Update

Coming up - Tomorrow

• Assembly

Coming up - Next Week

• Swimming

Coming up this Term

• Prep 100 Days of School Celebration
• Book Week

Appreciations and News

Welcome Back 

I hope everyone enjoyed a break and a change of routine, if not necessarily a change of scenery over the term holidays.  For all who travelled to warmer climates, you have earned the envy of those who didn’t!

Child Safety - we take it seriously 

No reasonable person would not have been horrified by the widely shared recent news relating to child safety breaches in a number of pre-school child minding services.  We take our obligations to child safety seriously and appreciate all our staff, parents and carers that play their part in ensuring the needs of our students are always our highest priority.  If you ever have any concerns, we urge you to communicate with a member of our child safety team (members of leadership and wellbeing).  

Phone lines have been down

We hope all our families who have tried to call have read the Compass post yesterday and realised that the lack of access has been due to an onsite NBN hardware fault.  We have had no access to landline calls both incoming and outgoing since Wednesday morning.  Following the subsequent Compass post, our admin team has regularly monitored our email and has communicated directly by mobile phone whenever necessary.  We are pleased that the issue has now been resolved.

Brooke’s Baby News 

Our community, especially all current and former students and families of Brooke Danaher class, will be delighted to hear of her and her partner’s terrific news.

Farewell Sandra 

At the end of term, our highly regarded Business Manager, Sandra Campbell received the exciting news that she was the successful candidate for the vacant business manager’s position at Brookside P-9 College in Caroline Springs. This role is a promotion position in the school office that Sandra first worked in when she joined the Department of Education. Many years later she has completed the cycle, managing a team that she was once a member of. The added benefit for Sandra is that the school is located within walking distance of her home. No more challenging traffic on Ballarat Rd! Sandra will be returning for several days over this fortnight as she transitions from her old into her new role. This will also enable us to hold a farewell morning tea next Friday. I am sure parents and carers who have been assisted by Sandra over the years will acknowledge her generous and supportive nature and wish her well. We have started our search for a replacement Business Manager while putting in some interim measures in place.

National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) 2025 

We are pleased to advise that access to the 2025 NAPLAN reports will be available to our grade 3 and 5 students tomorrow. Unless we hear directly from parents we will send them home in a sealed envelope addressed to the parent/carer. We are delighted with the NAPLAN results for our grade 3 and 5 cohorts. We will provide details next week.

Swim Program at the MAC 

Starting the term with P-3 swimming across the day from Tuesday has involved lots of planning, organisation and assistance. We appreciate the preparation work of grade 2 team member Trang, Assistant Principal, Liz, our admin team and the parents and carers who have answered the call to assist. The model has been adjusted this year with grades prep, 1, 2 and 3 all participating during the same program. This has meant that sessions occur throughout the length of the day and involve students from a variety of classes sharing the buses and facilities at the same time. This appears to be working really well, with the older students able to offer excellent role modelling for our younger students.

Staff Leave 

We always inform families directly when class teachers are on leave for a specific reason, such as long service leave. However, our specialist leave arrangements are usually referenced within the newsletter. For the first fortnight of term, our Art specialist Susie Belcher is on leave. We are fortunate to have Jess Russell-Davies backfill this role where practical, one that she is so familiar with. Kerrie Ahrens who works part time Tuesday to Thursday teaching Physical Education and Italian is also on long service leave and will be replaced by Toula Tolikas, a regular CRT at FWPS. 

Facilities Update

• New Works - We were pleased to contract ColdFlow, a new company to our school, to install an integrated reverse cycle air conditioning system for the library and the gallery space. This was a challenging installation due to site access restrictions and the requirement to fit in with the Their Care holiday program that was using the gallery space throughout the term break. We were very pleased when the final fitting off was completed on Monday morning. This substantial project was resourced via our strategic use of locally raised funds - money raised by our community and through our partnership with TheirCare.  
• Our Building Project - We continue to be very pleased with the excellent progress with the construction of our new gymnasium, music, food technology and canteen building.  Anyone returning to FWPS for the first time in a fortnight, will have certainly noticed that the wall cladding to the gymnasium and the structure for the other rooms has advanced substantially.  We appreciate that through the design and construct model, the architectural team from Kennedy Nolan continue to be keenly involved in every step and are able to rapidly make adjustments when circumstances demand. A recent example of this flexibility was evident when the Bowden construction team were unable to source the chosen red external cladding sheets from anywhere nationwide. An adjustment of colours was discussed, agreed to and sourced.  We are really pleased with the new choice, but perhaps even more we appreciate that no time was lost due to the early planning, communication and action that followed. As we are the end user, but not considered the ‘client’ (that role is assigned to the Victorian Schools’ Building Authority), at the start we were concerned that our participation might be diminished. That has not proven the case, and we can cite multiple examples this year when our agency has been respected, enabling sensible changes that have been driven by local knowledge and experience.   Our regular fortnightly meeting was held this morning. I will continue to regularly report on construction developments.
• Wallaby Building - Our 110 year old iconic original building has shown considerable wear since its centenary. In 2021 many of our community will remember us having to vacate the building for much of the year, with all classrooms and offices relocated to temporary buildings on the oval. After very significant underpinning and repairs, we were delighted to move back during the last term of that year. Unfortunately, within 12 months more cracking appeared, mostly at the other end of the building, the area that the engineering scope had determined did not require underpinning. We have received regular structural engineering reports in the subsequent period.  Most recently over January, storm water rectification and roofing works were managed. The most recent structural report required the removal of hard plaster surrounding a lintel in the ground floor corridor, as falling hard plaster is a potential safety hazard. The report has indicated it is timely for this area to be temporarily propped.    

Coming up - Tomorrow

Assembly 

Assembly is back of course and we look forward to featuring 2CW with their turn for an assembly item and of course the first Pupil of the Week awards for the term. The weather is looking a little challenging, so remember we will revert to using the gallery space if needed and webcast to classrooms. We will anticipate parents and carers of 2CW students and parents of students receiving awards, joining us in the limited space we can offer. Assembly is due to begin at 2:40pm.

Coming Up - Next Week

Swimming 

Swimming continues - concluding on Friday, following our 9 day program.

Warm regards,

Brendan

Reminders and Repeated Messages

To Parents/Carers,

UPDATE ON SUSPENSION AND EXPULSION POWERS

Our school is committed to providing a safe, respectful and inclusive environment for all students and staff. You may be aware of recent changes announced to suspension and expulsion powers that will be available to Victorian principals from the start of this term.

We know that students’ behaviour outside of school, particularly online, can sometimes impact the safety of students and staff at school.

In exceptional circumstances, principals of Victorian government schools will be able to suspend or expel students for behaviour that occurs outside of school grounds and/or hours including online, if it poses a significant danger to the safety and wellbeing of students or staff.

These powers apply only to serious incidents where there is a clear and close connection to the school and the behaviour of a student outside of school unreasonably impacts the safety and wellbeing of students or staff at school, and their ability to learn or work. Please note:

They do not apply to behaviours unrelated to the school or school community.

They only apply to behaviour which occurs from Monday, 21 July 2025 onwards.

Suspension and expulsion will remain measures of last resort – our primary approach continues to focus on proactive and positive behaviour support, including working with you to teach students the behaviours we expect of them, in school and in life.

Thank you for your continued support as we work in partnership to educate and support our young people.

Sincerely,

Brendan Millar

Principal