Board Report

Hi Everyone,

This month we began our time with a concentrated time of prayer led by Mark Churchward. We brought our whole community before the LORD, staff,  teachers, parents and children. Praying for the spiritual and mental well-being of everyone. We reflected upon our Shalom Guidelines which are in place - “To equip the Board and the Senior Leadership Team for dealing with the unknown.”

The guiding verses of Scripture are 2 Corinthians 5:17-21;

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we looked towards the end of the year Tim Argall informed us that the school would do its best, within the restrictions in place, to celebrate the milestone events, particularly Thanksgiving on the 2nd December and the Year 6 and Year 12 milestones. How these celebrations will look is not certain yet, but every effort will be made to make them as meaningful as possible to all concerned. Let’s hope and pray that we will at least not be in such a tightly restricted situation like the present. Please pray for all the students for whom these events will be significant.

We were informed that the return to school next term is confirmed for Prep to year 2 and for years 10 - 12. There will hopefully be some possibilities for the years 3 - 9 in term four. Most students will be very happy about going back, not to mention parents and teachers. We also heard that the Year 12 exams will hopefully go ahead at school as before, perhaps with some more distancing than usual and they will finish on the 2nd December also. We were assured that returning to normal operations will take time and will be done in a carefully considered way.

One prayer request that Jon Price gave us was the urgent need for COVID related building site restrictions to be lifted for Hall Road in order for the project to be completed in time for 2021. Hall Road is a big site and has room for more workers to work safely than are allowed at the moment. Applications have been made and Jon is waiting for a response. Please pray that it is hurried along.

This week the staff will have their annual “retreat” without retreating too far. They will be at home, but they will need to be able to conjure up a sense of retreat, perhaps we can pray for them that they will feel that they are, in some meaningful way, on retreat and that they will be encouraged and built up after a long and difficult year.

We had a final look over the Shalom Document and it will soon be available for the school to see the vision for Donvale, looking ahead for the next four years. It is a great looking publication which I am sure you will enjoy reading.

Finally we would like you to know that even in COVID-19 there are a number of opportunities for parents to serve the college in a volunteer capacity, if you would like to find out what those opportunities are please write to the following email address – board@donvale.vic.edu.au.

That is all for this month folks, may the LORD bless each of you.