Appointment of new assistant principal and building update

Meg Whatley has been appointed Assistant Principal at Wangaratta High School.

Most of you will know that Sheri Parkhouse has taken up the Executive Principal role at Benalla P-12 College. That's good news for Sheri and for Benalla, and it's good news for us as well. Sheri developed much of her leadership here, in this school, working with our staff and our students. We are growing people who go on to run schools, and Meg is one of them.

Sheri's move confirmed the assistant principal vacancy here, which Meg has been acting in since the middle of last year, and the position went to open recruitment. We had applicants from well beyond our region. I put an external principal on the selection panel along with one of our senior teachers, so this wasn't a decision made quietly among ourselves. Meg was appointed on the strength of her application and her interview.

John Paola continues as Assistant Principal, so we have two in the role. Meg's area is teaching and learning excellence, and John's is engagement and wellbeing. That's the same structure we've been running while Meg has been acting, so nothing changes for students or families in practice.

Meg started here in 2009 at the Edwards Street campus. She took family leave in 2014, kept doing casual relief work through it, and came back to us properly in 2017. She has been Leading Teacher for Pathways and Transitions, ran Year 12 for seven years, coordinated VCAL, and led our Senior Years team.

Most of her work has been in the senior years, and a good deal of it in the compliance side of VCE and VCE VM. Nobody thanks you for that work and it goes wrong quickly if it isn't done properly. Meg has been meticulous about it for years, and our students have benefited from that whether they know it or not.

She's also kept up her own professional learning alongside the job, including our Real Schools work, the VTLM teacher and leader workshops, Youth Mental Health First Aid and Cognitive Coaching.

Meg knows this school and this community, and she's earned the appointment. I'm looking forward to working with her in the substantive role. Congratulations, Meg.

Reminder - student mobile phone use not permitted at school

 The school has a long-standing mobile phone policy that is aligned with the statewide Department of Education ban on mobile phone use at school. I've written extensively in the media and to parents about this over my time, and there's no doubt mobile phone use amongst adolescents worldwide remains very, very challenging. Protecting students in the school day is one of the key reasons that sit behind the Victorian Department of Education's ban on mobile phones at schools. 

I once again ask for your support and thank you for the great collaborative support that we what we've had. Please do speak with  your child about the expectations of the mobile phone policy, making sure they understand the consequences if they do not follow the policy. I ask that you do not try to contact them during the day on their mobile phones. Instead, if you need to get an urgent message, you ring reception and messages will be passed on, as sometimes this contact from outside does lead to breaches of the policy on site. 

Our full policy, the department's policy and other useful resources for parents and carers, is on our website, which is linked below. 

Building works update

Work on the Flexible Learning Centre is going well. We're increasingly confident that handover will happen in the last week of the Term 3 holidays, which would give us the building from the first week of Term 4. That first week will be a transition week also, because we'll be clearing out the senior building so that works can start there.

There's a lot happening on the campus at the moment. You'll have noticed the courtyard is closed off entirely now for a full renewal. Along with the landscaping there's a substantial amount of underground work going on for stormwater. Drainage in that part of the school has been a problem since the last major upgrade, so we're taking the opportunity to sort it out properly while the ground is open.

I took some photos around the site this week. They give a better sense of it than I can in writing.

Dave Armstrong

Executive Principal