Dear parents, carers and community

Spring Festival

Our Spring Festival is just over a week away!! Thanks to our P&C, we are so excited to be holding our Spring Festival on Friday, 15 September 2023, from 12pm until 4pm.

Unlimited rides passes, pre-paid tokens and pre-ordered food can be ordered via the Qkr app.

UNLIMITED RIDES PASS - By purchasing an ‘unlimited rides pass’, your child has access to 5 carnival rides – Zoomer, Giant Slide, Teacups, Windjammer and Kanga Bounce. All carnival rides will be supplied and safely operated by Fosters Carnival Amusements. All rides are fully covered by Public Liability Insurance, comply with Australian Safety Standards and are inspected annually by qualified structural and electrical engineers.

TOKENS – Activity and games tokens are on sale in sheets of $5 or $10. They can be used for coloured hair spray, nail painting, lolly guessing competition, footy pass, ring toss, threadable edibles or DIY food stalls.

FREE ENTERTAINMENT – Thanks to the P&C, there will be a live DJ, free pace-painting, photo opportunities and a chill-out zone.

ART COMPETITION - We will be running a "Flower Frenzy" art competition with artworks displayed at the Spring Festival. Prizes, generously donated by the P&C, will be awarded to the winner and highly commended in each stage for each category on the day. Students may enter as many categories as they like and as many times as they wish.

Spring Festival Parent and Community Helpers

If you are able to lend a hand to support class stalls or P&C sales and BBQ, please contact the office or your child’s teacher. Many hands make light work!

Spring Festival Student Supervision

As much of the Spring Festival is during school hours, our staff are responsible for students and will be supervising students who do not have parent supervision. If a student’s parent or another family member will be here on the day, and will be supervising your child, they will be required to ‘sign for’ each child. This will mean that while your child will be enjoying the fun, there will be a responsible adult caring for each child. We understand that not all families will be able to join us, and if not, our staff will supervise students in groups.

At 3pm, at the close of our regular school day, if a student does not have a parent or responsible adult caring for them, we will escort students to their regular gate for them to go home as they usually would. If a student has their parent/carer at school, they will be able to stay until the conclusion of the event at 4pm.

To provide permission for another adult to supervise your child during the Spring Festival, we will ask you to complete the permission form sent home and shared on School Enews.

Public Speaking

Congratulations to all the students who have prepared and delivered speeches to their class or stage group, as part of the Community of Schools public speaking competition. It has been fabulous seeing the effort gone in to preparing and confidence grow. I'm looking forward to seeing students from each stage represent our school at the final, which will be held at Balarang Public School on Wednesday 13 September.

Congratulations to our finalists:

Early Stage 1 - Meadow G, Indiana K, Paxon G
Stage 1 - Scarlett R, Addison B, Xander D
Stage 2 - Betsy H, Amelia T, Ellie H
Stage 3 - Sienna F, Polly H, Peyton T

Kindergarten 2024 Information Evening

Thank you to all parents and carers who were able to join us for our Kindergarten 2024 Information Evening held this week. If you were unable to come, or if you have not yet enrolled your child for next year, please phone the office so we can assist. It is important we are aware of all students who will be starting so we can prepare and support their transition to school.

Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, grandads, special men and those playing two roles. A huge thank you to our P&C and the many volunteers who organised, set up or run the Father’s Day Stall for our students. It takes a great amount of work to plan for and coordinate, but definitely makes our students happy to carefully pick the perfect gift for their special someone. We hope you all had a lovely Sunday!

SASS Appreciation Week

Every day we recognise and are thankful for the important part our School Administration and Support Staff (SASS) play in our schools! However, this week marks a special week on our Calendar - SASS Appreciation Week. Thank you to every member of our SAS team for their daily contributions to our school – in the office, the classrooms, around the grounds, the library and with our community. I feel privileged to work with a fabulous SAS team and appreciate the hard work, compassion, care, dedication and skill that they bring. I know our school would not function the way it does without each one of them.

Student Safety

We have recently had reports made by concerned community members about student safety in regards to roads and morning supervision. There has been an increase in students trying to cross roads close to intersections/roundabouts or areas with limited visibility to the pedestrian and/or drivers. If your child walks to school without adult supervision, please remind them about road safety and the best place for them to cross roads.

In addition, there has been an increase in students coming to school prior to 8.30am. We have had reports of a number of these students leaving the front gate, and congregating in the man street or behind the bank. Our school supervision starts at 8.30am, as staff are not on duty or busy preparing for the day ahead. We will have some increased staff presence of a morning over the coming weeks, however we ask that you reinforce with you child the expectations that they are to enter the school immediately after you have dropped them off at 8.30am.

Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) Meeting

The next General Meeting for the AECG is Thursday 7th September at Dapto Public School, 4pm. If you are attending, you are invited to attend early to view their art display in the library prior to the meeting starting.

Kind regards

Jodi Niedermayer