From the Principal 

Reminder: Friday 25th June

Last day of Term - 2:30pm finish

Thanks for another great week, term and semester of learning. You all deserve a well earned break and hopefully a chance to get away!

Parent Teacher Meetings: Thank you to families and class teachers for discussing the progress of the children. I hope you had a chance to celebrate their achievements and discuss next steps for semester two. I honestly hoped we would be able to host face to face meetings and I acknowledge that meeting on screens is not ideal. Let’s hope we can meet in person more often soon. 

Reports: Damien Horbury has continued to support the staff through the reporting process and assured me they will be available via Sentral tomorrow from 3:30pm. Thanks Damien and thanks to all staff for your work. 

NAIDOC Week: We have a dedicated group of staff who have been led by Kim Kenny in raising the awareness and profile of Indigenous culture across our school. There is a fantastic display in the gym that is the culmination of the whole school contributing to the activity. I hope we can educate students even better than we were and continue to recognise our indigenous heritage. 

Staffing: Just a reminder about a few changes for next term. 

• Our Business Manager of 29 years (40 plus in education) will retire on Friday!!! Judy Webb has been an icon and pillar of this community for so long. She has managed budgets, HR, guided staff, students and families, supported so many of us in so many ways. I feel very privileged to have Judy work with me and teach me many things in the last 2 years. I wish her all the best in her well deserved retirement and hope she adjusts to a more relaxed lifestyle. We will miss her dearly. We will also welcome Lara Field into the role of BM too.
• Ryan Baltetsch heads to Mirripoa as the Acting AP and we welcome Jo Chapman into his class.
• Jessie Clarke heads off to welcome a new bub into her family and Liz Charles will build on Jessie’s great work with Nikita.
• Mrs Lauren Baker will take  term 3 off for some well deserved long service leave and Sebastian Earle will join the Year 6 team during this time.
• There will be a few staff that had planned long service leave but have cancelled due to Covid, they may reschedule. We will let classes know if or when this occurs.
• Mrs H will step into my role for two weeks while I am on leave too.
• Mrs Ann Miller will be the Acting AP helping Mrs H.
• Ms Kerryn McKeon will take over Mr Baltetsch’s other role of Learning Specialist and continue to lead the Literacy across the school.
• Congratulations to Cynthia Todd who left us 10 days ago and has already had her second baby! Great news and we look forward to meeting the new addition.

Leaving families: We wish families that are departing OGPS all the very best for their new adventures at their new schools and communities. Thanks for your contribution to OGPS. 

Yard duty: Just a reminder that staff supervision begins at 8:45am and we have a terrific before school care program with Camp Australia. The mornings are pretty fresh or wet at the moment and Camp Australia is open! 

Weekend visitors: Great to see and hear about our facilities being used by our community across the weekend. We appreciate our community looking after the school when we are not there and if you can keep doing this over the holidays, we will be very grateful. 

Have a great break and I look forward to seeing you all in term 3. 

Scott McCumber 

Principal