School Council Report
Semester 1, 2018
As I’m sure everyone can relate, 2018 has started as it means to proceed – a busy, challenging and enriching year.
The School Council has had a great half year with our key focus being on school sustainability and finance. You would have heard from Sherril every fortnight on the exciting projects happening and visibly seen the changes around the school. Building works can make the day-to-day life of our staff challenging, especially during incursions and concert rehearsals, but as per normal, the challenge has been taken in their stride and they have innovated. What a great idea to pitch a tent on the artificial turf for the circus incursion – it was hit with the kids!
Our School Council has three main responsibilities:
- Finance – overseeing the development of the annual budget, monitoring progress against the budget in conjunction with the School Office and ensuring that monies coming into the school is properly expended and authorised.
- Strategic Planning – participating in the development and monitoring of the School Strategic Plan.
- Policy Development & Review – developing, reviewing and updating policies that reflect the school’s values and support the broad direction set out in the Strategic Plan and school operations.
In addition to these three key responsibilities, the School Council also governs the value added services - the Canteen, Outside School Hours Care and the Uniform Shop. Below is a snap shot of just some of the items that have been on our agenda in 2018 thus far.
Finances
Each year, the finance cycle commences around August with the preparation of the following year’s draft budget based on the operating needs of the school, the investment in programs aligned to the Strategic Plan and the extra-curricular programs that are planned. This informs the ask for parent contributions, both essential and voluntary.
At the start of the year, the budget is reviewed based on parent contributions receipted. Our goal is always to maximise the spend on our educational programs (both essential and extra-curricular) that have a direct benefit to the children. We also need to invest in making the school’s operations sustainable, both from ongoing maintenance and building works, and create an environment that both our teachers and student remain proud of and engaged. Unfortunately, government funding does not cover all operating and extra-curricular expenses and we are dependent on the voluntary contributions from our school community.
This year has seen a decline in voluntary parent contributions that has meant that we need to tighten our belts on operating expenses and ask the hard questions in regard to the additional programs that are run throughout the school.
If you have not yet finalised your 2018 contributions, please do so as soon as possible. We review this monthly and your contributions could make the difference we need to sustain all of the additional programs we run beyond the Victorian Curriculum.
School Council have done a deep dive into the process for setting the Key Experiences (incursions/excursions) costs. The process for this starts the year prior when each year level sets out their plan for the following year. Estimates and quotes are received for each activity based on anticipated numbers attending (these are user pays optional experiences) and are endorsed by the School Office. The cost of the activities cover not only the activity itself, but associated costs such as transport, first aid and replacement teachers to cover the additional teachers required to attend the excursion. The School Council was satisfied with the processes, estimation, costs and charges based on the timing of booking.
As always, in setting the 2019 Education Contributions and Key Experience requirements, School Council will endeavour to balance the need to continually enhance our academic program and resources with keeping increases to a minimum. Once again we will be adopting a user pays principle – all identifiable costs will be applied to individual families according to year level.
2019 Education Contributions and Key Experience requirements will be distributed to families in September - your contribution towards the facilities, supplies and services used by ALL students will play an integral role in the opportunities and outcomes for your child/ren and we value your continued support of our School.
Our School Office was audited this semester with a focus on financial management and monies control. It was fantastic to see a clean bill of health with only minor findings that have been addressed via policy updates and slight changes to our operating procedures. Well done Sue!
Canteen
The Canteen is a school run value added service with the goal to provide our school community access to good quality food through lunch orders and over counter sales. It relies heavily on volunteers in order to be able to run this service and to keep the prices as low as possible.
The Canteen has been operating at a loss for the last few years, and we are slowly working with the Canteen Subcommittee to revise our pricing to ensure the Canteen breaks even whilst ensuring healthy, affordable options.
One of the biggest challenges with the Canteen is securing volunteers. The Canteen operations start early in the day, so volunteering an hour at any time of the day is welcome. You do not need to be there all day or over the lunch periods. Please reach out to Jenny Marashli (Canteen Manager) or the Canteen Committee or visit the Canteen page of our website to find out more.
OSHC
With the building works removing our Multi Purpose Room, OSHC has needed to be moved and distributed across the Science Room and Library. The team have done a fantastic job of adapting to their new space and optimising the use of the new amphitheatre and oval. It’s great to see the kids out in the fresh air both morning and afternoon enjoying outdoor play.
Each year we are seeing an increase in families using this service and as such we want to ensure we continue to provide a high quality and engaging environment for the students. Kelly and team are doing a great job as evidenced in the feedback we receive.
The OSHC Committee are always looking for new members who want to contribute to the vision and implementation of programs within OSHC. It’s always an advantage to have families that use the service, sitting on the Committee as it provides the 'customer' perspective needed to further develop the program. Please reach out to Kelly Szabo (OSHC Coordinator) if you are interested.
Uniform Shop
Annie Thomas (Uniform Shop Coordinator) has been very busy optimising the school Uniform Shop operations making it easy for volunteers to run. The Uniform Shop is another service that would not be possible without the help of our volunteers. Each day it opens and delivering Qkr orders is only possible with parent help. Annie’s goal is to make volunteering here simple and from all reports, she is succeeding. If you have time, please reach out to Annie to see how you can help.
A great new innovative system to manage lost property has also been implemented. I’m sure everyone would agree that being able to easily recover that bomber jacket or polar fleece has made a huge dent in the frustrations at home.
We are in the process of reviewing our suppliers to ensure that the quality, affordability and accessibility of uniforms can be maintained.
Looking Ahead...
Our focus for Semester 2 will be to unlock data that will lead us to insights that will help us better understand our school community. We want to understand the challenges our school community is experiencing; what the external factors not directly visible to the school may be; and what is driving the trends we are seeing. We need to learn how we can support our school community so that we can increase engagement, make volunteering rewarding and demonstrate the value of your contributions.
As always, please free to contact me via the school email address.
Carolynn Smith
School Council President
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