Sustainability at NPS 

Sustainability Committee update.

Welcome everyone back to school and here’s an update on the grants and projects we are currently engaged in, some of which have largely been on hold for the last few months for obvious reasons. 

The Sustainability Committee met on Friday 12th of June in person and via zoom to catch up for the first time since March and enjoyed cups of tea and homemade cake. We intend to continue to offer zoom options for future meetings for those who cant make it in person.

Here are the project updates:

One of the Landcare grants Newlands PS received was for an Indigenous and Merri Creek education program, which was going to occur over Term 2. This program is currently being re-imagined for 2021 delivery and we have been provided with an extension of time to use the funds and run the program.

The second Landcare grant was to establish raised beds for the aftercare program. All of the equipment has been purchased, we need to order some compost.  We are now waiting for the school visiting restrictions to alter so that we can go onto site to help aftercare set them up. We will be requesting some parent help when this occurs. 

The Federal biodiversity grant amount we were allocated was reduced, and so plans for an outdoor classroom have been scaled back. We still have the plans in place and will look to incorporate this in the future with other grant/fund ideas. Work on this area near the bee hotel is also on hold at the moment due to restrictions but lots of design work, planning and costings haven taken place during the lock-down and we thank Jason for that work.

We continue to work on the Resource Smart Schools program. Thanks to Dee for agreeing to input utilities bill data! Hopefully the cancelled PD (due to COVID-19) for NPS's staff that is part of our schools commitment to Resource Smart will be able to be rescheduled soon.

We have been provided with an extension of time (due to the current situation) for all the projects and to use the funds and we have taken up these extensions.

If you would like any more information about any of these projects or to get involved we would like to invite you to join the sustainability committee in the future. If you are keen, skilled, have ideas or are just interested to see what we are up to and meet some new folks please contact Mike (mjrowell@gmail.com) to be added to the sustainability Google group.

For the holidays...

Creative Brimbank in partnership with Environmental Film Festival Australia (EFFA) presents – Going Green – a mini-festival dedicated to celebrating nature, educating families about environmental issues and preserving our natural environment through art.

Join us these July school holidays (7-11 July) with a program designed for primary school aged children and their families. https://bowerystacc.com.au/goinggreen/

All events: no charge

Calling all gardeners or aspiring gardeners!

NPS garden group has been dormant, but hopefully not for much longer. We have an email list, and if you would like to be on it please email Mel (Bronte’s mum) (melmate@hotmail.com) and she will gladly add you. Here is an email she sent out to the group just this week:

Hello, Everyone!

I can't believe it, but this is the first email of the year to this group, it certainly has been a very strange start to the year and I hope everyone has been doing ok over the last few months. 

My name is Mel (for the newbies on the list) and I just wanted to make contact and fill you in on where things are for our very fabulous group.

First of all, welcome to the NPS Garden Group! At the moment, this group is just an email list but in the past, it has been the main source of action in the garden at Newlands. In fact, the garden group has been going for 11 years and has planted out a lot of the school grounds!!

Things are a little different now, we have a Sustainability Group and a Buildings and Grounds committee (attached to School Council). These groups have taken over some of the business of the group and it has been really great to have things refocused and branching out into other areas of the school.

However, this group still plays an important role! We are a group of people interested in gardens and gardening and imaginative play within gardens. Projects can come up through this group, plans about regular or irregular maintenance/weeding sessions can be made, liaising with the other groups in the school to recruit people to projects can happen. It can actually be a number of different things and depends on how involved the group wants to be. 

My youngest daughter Bronte is in grade 4, and after being heavily involved in this group since its inception, it's time to share some of the organisational love. I would like to share the administrative role of this group with a few people for the next year or so, so that the information and history is not all with one person. Are there some people in the group who would like to take a more active role in the admin side of things? It isn't likely to be a lot, mostly emails out and some organising things from time to time. Please send me an email: melmate@hotmail.com if you're interested. Otherwise, sit tight and there will be some activity soon. I imagine that as restrictions lift there will be some much needed maintenance of the school gardens.

Thanks to everyone for their interest and energy around making our little school a better place and hopefully I get to see you all in the gardens at school sometime soon.

Cheers, Mel.