Principal's Report

In this week’s newsletter:

News, Appreciations & Acknowledgements

• Our School's Emergency Management Plan
• From the Office
• Adieu Jane!
• Father's and Special Person's Day
• Divisional Athletics

• Concert Week

   

Coming Up Tomorrow

• Special Assembly Official Opening of the Eagle Building

   

Coming Up - Week 10 - the Final Week of Term

• Kids' Share
• Sporting Colours Day
• End of Term

News, Appreciations and Acknowledgements

Our School’s Emergency Management Plan

We want to let you know about our school’s Emergency Management Plan. Our school plans for a range of hazards, including but not limited to severe weather, medical emergencies, building fires and intruders. We develop specific response procedures to address these risks.  

We also conduct drills regularly, ensuring that our core procedures of on-site and off-site evacuation, sheltering-in-place, and lockdown / lockouts are well-rehearsed and understood by staff and students.

If we enact our Emergency Management Plan, we will notify you by Compass notification and email, with updates on our actions. Please do not come to the school unless directed to do so, as you may put yourself and others in danger. If there is anything we need you to do, we will let you know.  

During an emergency, the school will work closely with emergency services to get specific advice to keep our community safe. Additionally, the Department of Education has dedicated emergency management staff to help monitor the situation and provide additional support to schools during emergencies.

If you have any questions about our school’s emergency management plan, please contact us at footscray.west.ps@education.vic.gov.au or on 9687 1535. Please be assured our top priority is the safety of our students and school community.

Thank you for your co-operation and understanding. 

From the Office

Our office team of course frequently makes arrangements for students who need to be collected early for a raft of different reasons. Recently we have had an increase in the number of parents and carers requesting that their children be waiting when they arrive.  This actually adds to disruption and frequently leads to children waiting in the office area for much longer than is necessary. Please arrange to arrive early and for practical reasons try avoiding lunch and recess play times of 11:30am - 12:10pm and 2:00pm - 2:30pm respectively.

Adieu Jane!

We were sad recently to confirm that our senior school Musical Futures teacher, Jane McCracken (pictured at one of Wednesday’s class mini concerts) will be finishing up with us at the end of term. Jane joined us 4 years ago and quickly made her mark through her generous and caring nature, marvellous adaptability and incredible music skill. Jane’s foresight into what a great music teaching space should look and operate like was a key insight for our architects when designing the Eagle Building. Jane has another music life, which after 15 years of music teaching in primary schools she really has an urge to pursue. Excitingly Jane with her combo, chEEsEs has been working on their album ‘Slices’ and will now be able to find time to complete it and return to touring nationally. You can check out two of her tracks on BandCamp and other streaming services. While we are saddened to say goodbye after a busy and successful Concert Week, what a great time for us to farewell Jane from our community.

Father’s and Special Person's Day

The Parent’s Association, Father's and Special Person’s Stall was another occasion when the voluntary labour of great members of our community coalesced with the work of the office team, to create a wonderful opportunity for our community’s dads and special people to be properly recognised. We appreciate the work of all our volunteers and I won’t attempt to thank them all now, but I would like to recognise the key drivers, Simone, Eleni, Nerida, Lucy and Erica who tirelessly and generously gave much of their time for planning, logistics, set up and on the day, stall sales. Thank you, PA team!

Divisional Athletics 

When chatting with a FWPS grandparent yesterday about Tuesday’s Divisional Athletics she used the word ‘fun’.  Great to see that when our kids visit other venues, they invariably demonstrate inclusivity, joy and a keenness to do their best. A big thanks to the ever reliable Stratos, accompanied by Dan Whiting in enabling our representatives to compete against divisional schools. A report will be included in next week's newsletter. An assembly report will be held over for next week’s assembly.

Concert Week

We only just had completed the challenging swimming fortnight, when our next tricky timetable needed to balance teaching and learning needs against two full days of Musical Futures (whole school specialist music) mini concerts presented by Jane and Kerrie, along with planning fortnight for our class and specialist teaching teams. After last year’s no concert year, it was great to highlight the flexibility our wonderful new Eagle Building provides for our school community. We appreciate that there also was a big demand for your time as parents and carers to visit and re-visit the Eagle Gymnasium to support your child(ren) in performing musically in front of a live audience.   

In the evenings we featured our Soundgarage program. It started on Tuesday with Henry’s guitar group. Gary’s guitar and drums and Chloe’s Singing and Performance students performed last evening. Concert week wraps up this evening with Henry’s drums students presenting from 5:30pm.  

The Soundgarage program launched FWPS as a school with music in our heart, pre-dating our Musical Futures specialist program and it continues to provide some fabulous opportunities for our students supported by terrific and talented music teachers. It is timely to mention that our Musical Futures program also received the voluntary support of Maddie (and Ken) from Soundgarage, as the evening Soundgarage concerts utilise the same tech set up. However, we are indebted to Maddie for also running tech throughout our daily mini music concerts as well.

Coming Up Tomorrow

Special Assembly Official Opening of the Eagle Building

Tomorrow’s assembly will have a different vibe to our regular Friday assemblies because we finally have the clear air to officially open our very well used and already much appreciated Eagle Building. Due to the format and purpose of this particular assembly we won’t feature our usual Pupil of the Week awards - they will return for the full school next week - however there will be a very special presentation as a key (and surely most memorable) aspect of the Official Opening. A group of student volunteers across the school have been selected by Jess R-D to perform a symbolic opening following the official ribbon cutting moment. Assembly will start at the slightly earlier time of 2:40pm. If you wish to attend, please enter the main gate at 2:30pm.

Coming Up - Week 10 - the Final Week of Term

Kids’ Share

Our twice a year opportunity for families to visit classrooms will occur after school on Wednesday, 16th September. The advent of this initiative several years ago provides an informal opportunity to interact with your child’s learning environment and class teacher.  Just visit any of your child’s classrooms from 3:30pm through until 4:15pm.

Sporting Colours Day

It is now a 20 year tradition that the Friday before the end of Term 3 is celebrated as our Sporting Colours Day (it started as Footy Colours Day). On the day we celebrate our love of sport and recreation and to mark this we approve the wearing of sports and recreational clothing.  We also have supported our very own government school’s charity, State Schools’ Relief, for the two decades that we have celebrated the day. We encourage our students to bring in a gold coin on the day,  and as SCD is annually supported by our Junior School Council, we ask that students hand the money to their child’s teacher to enable all funds to be collected by JSC members across the school and brought to the office for counting. A total is then able to be shared with the school community at our final assembly and the money then electronically transferred to State Schools’ Relief Fund by close of business.

End of Term

School will conclude at 2.30pm following an early assembly on Friday, 18th September - the final day of Term 3.  TheirCare will operate from this earlier time. Please ensure that your family plans for early dismissal.

Best regards,

Brendan

Repeated and Revised Messages