Facilities News 

 

Dr Denise Clarke 

Facilities Manager 

Shade Sail Grant

We had news this week of a successful application for a grant of $17,000 to provide shade for the sandpit in playground 1. It will be a challenge designing sails that cannot be used as a ladder to climb on to the school roof. Hopefully the design is ready this week.

Walkway Steps - We have finally had steps from the walkways to the playgrounds built. Staff will be relieved that students will use the steps rather than take inappropriate shortcuts. The building inspector is visiting today (Friday) to inspect and approve the steps.

Library  - books are gradually being unpacked and set up in the library. We hope it will be operational in the next couple of weeks.

Storm water drainage 

As many of you would know it takes a while to obtain quotes for various projects and depending on the cost, additional quotes need to be obtained. We had three quotes for installing more drainage outside the therapy offices and on the oval.  The therapy area is fenced off from the students, so we have decided to start work on that as soon as possible. We will leave the oval area until the January holidays to complete.

Zoning areas of the school

We are all conscious of COVID concerns and touching door handles and padlocks around the school.  Consequently, we are trying to minimise the gates which are locked during the day. We are using gates to "zone" areas of the school to minimise student transit through from one section to the other. You may notice a few extra signs saying "This door is to be locked between 9:10 a.m. and 2:50 p.m."  Hopefully, this will support students staying in their cohort bubbles.

Storage & teaching spaces: during the lockdown period, the new building was being installed, specialist teaching equipment was stored all over the school. We are now rationalising all our storage and ensuring all equipment is being returned to their permanent spaces. 

We are anticipating  that COVID will be around until there is  universal vaccination, which is likely to be most of next year. Extra precautions have been put in place e.g. CLH becoming the second staff room will continue.  This will limit opportunities for quite a while, for specialist programs and meetings and gatherings which normally use the space.