Collingwood College

School Council News

SCHOOL COUNCIL NEWS  - May, 2017

School Council meets on the fourth Thursday evening of the month during the school term.  It has several committees, including buildings and grounds; finance, education policy; communications; community & fundraising; canteen committee, and ad hoc working groups where required (such as for managing the tender process for the new school cleaning contract).  Some outcomes from the April meeting are noted here for your interest. If you are interested in contributing to a committee, please let one of us know so we can pass your details on to the convenor of the committee in question. If you are busy and find it hard to physically get into school for meetings, there are opportunities to contribute remotely.

  1. School Canteen. The three year contract for the school canteen with Hungry Hampers was due to finish at the end of this term. For various reasons, it has been decided that they will finish up early, and the last day of operation was today (Friday, 5 May). Sherrian Poon, an active parent at the school and Treasurer on School Council, who used to run the canteen, has offered to step in and run the canteen until the end of this term. After discussion, this offer has been agreed by Council, and Sherrian will manage the canteen on the school’s behalf from Monday, 8 May until the end of term, when we will review the arrangements.  It does create some extra work for the school, but Council is excited to bring the canteen arrangements in-house and we are confident the arrangement will be welcomed by all canteen customers.  Please say welcome and thanks to Sherrian when she gets back behind the counter!
  2. Changes on School Council and vacancy - finance expertise.   The parent representatives elected this year were Sherrian Poon, Alex Stol and Cath Smith.  Existing parent reps on Council include Kathy Miller and Maya Starr. Muhktar Mohamed-Saeed has had to recently resign for health reasons.  The DET representatives are Chris Astley (from Collingwood Alternative School), Melanie Singleton, Craig Bradley and Liria Stratis.  Dale Perichon is our Executive Officer, as School Principal.    Yuki Cameron has been a co-opted member in recent times. There is currently room for several co-options, plus a casual vacancy for the year ahead. A priority is to identify a parent with finance/accounting expertise who may be interested in coming onto Council and or the Finance Committee.  If you are interested, please contact Martina Owen (new business manager), Dale or Cath Smith.
  3. Refreshing the Collingwood College vision. With all the growth and changes over the past few years, the Council has determined to refresh the vision of the school, to support clear strategic priorities to be developed for the next strategic plan (due for development in 2018).  Would you be interested in being on a working group to help engage and consult the school community? The Council will own the project, but it would be fantastic to include some parents students and teaching staff with an interest in involving our diverse school community. A working group  meeting will be held at 4:30pm on Thursday 25 May at school, prior to the May council meeting. Please feel very welcome to attend if you would like to be on the working group or have suggestions for how we engage the diverse parts of our school community to crystallise what we value, what we want to excel at, and how we maintain and build on the vision of “inspiring young people”.  For more info contact Cath Smith.
  4. Welcome and thanks. Council is delighted to welcome Martina Owen as our new business manager and while she has a big task to build and enhance our admin and finance team, we are very confident our internal systems will be significantly improved by the end of this year.  As well as a number of staff comings and goings, we also bid goodbye to Stanley Pamieta from our office team last week. Stan has been at the school in numerous roles over nearly 30 years and is finally moving into a post-paid-work life. Thank you so much Stan, and all the very best.

Thanks to everyone for the great efforts in sprucing up our school for the open day  this Thursday 4 May and information nights this month.  Keep warm everyone.

Cheers,  

Cath Smith

School Council President. Email: cathsmith49@optusnet.com.au