Dear Parents and Carers,

We’ve finally made it through what has been a very busy and complex year. As we say goodbye to the year that was 2021, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank our wonderful families who supported learning from home, our dedicated teaching and school staff and our wonderful students who have demonstrated resilience, flexibility and commitment in managing remote learning. There is no better community than the Saltwater community!

As I reflect on the past three years and look back on all that we have done and achieved, I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. To think that Saltwater College opened its doors in January 2019 with approximately 350 students enrolled and now in 2022, our enrolment numbers have rapidly increased to approximately 1500 students. We have managed this growth all in between dealing with a pandemic and managing remote learning. No wonder why we all feel exhausted as we finish out the year!

This year in particular, I am so appreciative of the resilience, flexibility and the can-do attitude of our students, staff and families, enabling us to achieve all that we have this year. Remote learning has been a particularly difficult time for all schools across Victoria, but coupled with being a brand new school, this has impacted us ten-fold. One area that I know has definitely been impacted is our ability to strengthen our home and school partnership. As a school, it is very important that the school and parents can trust one another and work in partnership for the benefit of our children. Over the next few years, a big focus for our school will be on continuing to develop our home school partnership. Next year, we would like to have more family and community evenings, to host more parent helper programs and to see more parents being involved with excursions, incursions and camps.

As the school continues to grow in enrolments, this also means that we have many new staff joining our school community to meet our growing demands. Next year alone we will be having 40 new staff members and 300 new students starting at Saltwater College. By now, most of our workforce planning for 2022 has been completed, with there just being some minor things that still need to be put in place by the end of the year.

I am very excited for our upcoming Year 1-6 Transition Day, where our students will meet their 2022 classmates and classroom teachers. Please note, we do have three classrooms that have not been allocated a teacher as yet, but please rest assured this will be done before the start of next year. Once these last few teachers are hired, correspondence will be sent to families to introduce our new staff members.

As we prepare for the Transition Day, I wish to remind families that a lot of thought and detailed planning goes into creating the 2022 classrooms. We take into consideration a number of factors to put these classes together such as, friendship requests, student needs, class dynamic and gender. Many weeks ago, all students provided us with a list of five students they wish to be in a class with, with every student being guaranteed at least one of these friends for 2022. Changing classes after they have been created is a very challenging task as it has a domino effect on other student friendship requests in the class. We appreciate parents and carers respecting the decisions made by the classroom teachers and school leadership around class allocations and encourage families to give your child/ren time to acclimatise and adjust to their new classes before approaching the school to requests changes. I wish to make it clear; we will not be accepting any class changes unless it is absolutely necessary.

Please don’t forget that school finishes on Thursday 16 December at 2:30pm, as Friday will be a curriculum day for our staff. This will allow our staff much needed time to move into their 2022 classrooms. As you will appreciate, that being a bigger school, this time is absolutely necessary for us to be able to be ready for the next academic year.

With the hiring of new staff, I also need to say goodbye to a number of staff who are leaving Saltwater next year due to various reasons or are going on a year’s leave. I would like to thank them for their contributions to the college and wish them all the very best in their future endeavours.

Leigh Machler – moving to a new school
Sarah Martin – moving to a new school
Jess Nardella – moving to a new school
Katelyn Waldron – maternity leave
Susan De Lange – moving to a new school
Paul Taylor – returning to his previous school
Chloe Danaher – taking leave for one year
Danielle Colling – taking leave for one year

The school will be taking a much needed break over the Christmas and New Year’s period, with us reopening in January, ready for book pack collections on 18 – 21 January. Outside of these days, the office will not be attended and any urgent queries should be directed to myself (Jackie Daniali) via email.

Families will be able to collect their packs from the bike racks at the front of the school during the following times:

18 January – 10am – 3pm
19 January – 10am – 3pm
20 January – 2pm – 7pm
21 January – 2pm – 7pm

Please note, that the times above are only for families who have pre-purchased the book packs online. If you are still requiring a book pack for 2022, please speak with the front office at your earliest convenience. If you are choosing to purchase your own stationery and books, please ensure to follow the book list as closely as possible.

Our first official day of school for students in 2022 is Tuesday 1 February, as both the 28 and 31 January are curriculum days. This will enable us to prepare our brand-new portables which will be delivered during the school holidays, as well as complete some much needed professional development and planning ready for another busy year.

On behalf of the staff at Saltwater College, I wish you a wonderful Christmas and a safe and happy holiday. I look forward to seeing you all back in the new year.

Kind regards,

Jackie Daniali

Music

Written by Michael Lapina