Dear families,

Graduation: What a night! Mr Grubb has again excelled with our wonderful Year 6 cohort and their families. Sam Sheahan and Georgia Fiske did an amazing job in coordinating the entire night. From all reports, there was a beautiful, relaxed atmosphere set amongst the gardens and the weather held out for us! The night was a huge success and will be remembered by all the students and families as their last hurrah at OGPS. Congratulations to all the students on their 7 years of Primary Schooling. We sincerely wish you all the best in secondary school and we know you have a solid foundation of skills to build on as you spread your wings.

Transition: Students visited their new classrooms and met their 2025 teacher/s and classmates today. We welcomed some of our new families and our new classroom teachers, Mia and Lucas. This process of creating classes is never an easy one and with many complex requests this year, made this even more challenging to accommodate. We have honestly been altering classes right up until this morning to get the best outcome. Will they be perfect? Probably not from some families’ perspectives, but please TRUST the decisions we have made and continue to help your children prepare for 2025. Speak positively and embrace the opportunities to make new friends. Old friends will still be your friends before school, at recess, lunch and after school too. This is where students develop resilience!

Reports: Staff have been so diligent in their reporting and assessments this term and the reports have now been published in Sentral – Damien & Jess have been working hard in the background and they may even be out beforehand. It has been a pleasure to read the reports with Mrs H and see the growth, achievement and development of our students. Congratulations to all the students on their results and to the staff on their hard work this year. Also, to the families, your support and encouragement is essential to our success.

Calendar: We have been planning 2025 and usually have a calendar of dates for families to be aware of. We are still waiting for the confirmation of Geelong Cup & Melbourne Cup public holiday for our area. Even though we took this Melbourne Cup as a public Holiday, we have been notified by DET that this is not to happen in 2025. We HAVE to take Geelong Cup as the public holiday; however, this has NOT been gazetted yet by COGG. We may try to plan a Curriculum Day for Melbourne Cup but this has NOT been finalised yet. We will likely publish the dates in Early 2025.

Staff: Each year we have some changes to our staff profile. Sometime teachers and staff change schools, contracts end, or they may retire etc. I’d like to acknowledge and thank Donna Heffernan in Year 4 taking over from Lauren Baker, Jo Chapman and Andrea Thompson in the Art room who move on to new schools, Mark Ward in our Learning Mentor space who finishes up with us, Julian Teague who is on Long Service Leave in 2025 and then we welcome Mia Moran, Lucas Chadwick, Lyn Stirling, Bec Condon (0.4), Emily Penman (0.4), Courtney Thompson and Johnrey Humber to the team for 2025. A number of our Family Leave teachers also return in part time capacities too.

CRT’s: This year has been like no other where we have relied heavily of CRT’s to help us out and continue to deliver high quality instruction. Thanks to all CRT’s who have helped out this year.

Thanks: An enormous thanks to all staff at OGPS. Our wonderful ES team, admin team, specialist team classroom teachers. To Andy, Ryan & Rhonda and Kristy H-C, in your roles – Thank you for supporting staff, students and families with kindness, compassion and empathy. Staff have again risen to the challenges and rigours of teaching and deserve a break over the summer. I hope you get some time to reflect on your achievements this year and please pass on my thanks to your extended families for supporting and enabling you to be your best at OGPS each day. I greatly appreciate it.

Volunteers: To our wonderful volunteers who give so much to the school from Kath Wade who has laminated thousands of books, guided the Art Show and so much more, to all the classroom helpers, those who have attended excursions and so much more – we thank you! We hope you will sign up again for another action packed 2023 and add even more value to the school.

Holiday and 2025 works: There will be ramp modifications occurring all throughout January and they hope to be finished before Day 1 2025. This will then be followed up by at least three other significant pieces of work - A new roof on the Prep, Year 1 and Art room wing and more disability access works across the school. There will also be some significant plumbing works in the SLC to better equip the sewer with its needs!

2025: The new year will roll around fast enough so please take some time to refresh, plan and organise things for a smooth start to 2025. Enjoy the break and time with family and friends. The admin team will be back on deck from 28th January and we look forward to seeing everyone (Year 1-6) on Thursday 30th January for a 9am start. Foundation parents – your program will be sent via Seesaw from the Foundation team.

Have a wonderful holiday everyone and thanks for a terrific 2024!

Scott McCumber

Principal

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