Leadership Report

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to a brand-new school year. I hope you have all had a wonderful break and are ready to start the year with excitement and enthusiasm. A warm welcome to our newest Saltwater College families, I hope that your experience at the school so far has been pleasant and enjoyable for both you and your children. I look forward to meeting each and everyone of you throughout the year. I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome all new and existing staff members to Saltwater College. We are looking forward to having you onboard and working with you in 2023.

It was wonderful to see so many happy and smiling faces as we welcomed our new intake of prep students this week. The children were very settled and enthusiastic to be at school, as were some of the tearful parents at pick up and drop off. 

Building Works and Traffic Congestion

As some of you may have noticed, the school experienced many developments since the end of last year. Many new classrooms have been established to cater for our growing enrolments. Our current numbers are approximately 1800 students and a teaching staff of 190. I understand that our first week has been difficult for some family members who have experienced congestion at pick up and drop off times. This has mainly impacted the Year 1 and 2 families. I apologise for the inconvenience and understand the frustration that this may cause. Please understand that the school is working hard to resolve some of these issues until the building works are completed. For the school and community to work together, we please ask that where possible, families walk their children to school rather than drive. This will help to minimise traffic congestion and ensure that our children are safe when entering and exiting school. 

IB Accreditation and Outstanding 2022 Teaching and Learning and Wellbeing Results 

Despite the issues that we face with building works and traffic congestion, it is my honour and privilege to announce that we are now officially an authorised International Baccalaureate World School for the Primary Years Program. We are thrilled with this achievement in our fifth year of operation. A huge congratulations to the entire community for their support, input, and collaboration in the accreditation process. 

In addition to this, we start 2023 building on our great results from 2022. It is with great pride that Saltwater College has produced outstanding data across all areas of the school, largely influencing student learning and achievement, wellbeing, and engagement. Again, we appreciate your ongoing support and collaboration as we work in partnership to continually achieve these outstanding results for our children.

The leadership structure for 2023 

I am pleased to announce an enhancement in our distributed leadership model which has been carefully curated this year. After an extensive recruitment process, we now have appointed an Assistant Principal for each cohort.  Every year level has its own designated Assistant Principal who oversees that cohort, and all parent communications/concerns will need to be directed to the relevant Assistant Principal.

The Assistant Principals are:

• Prep – Taxia Katsouranis
• Year One – Danielle Colling & whole school Adult Learning and Student Voice and Agency)
• Year Two – Hayley Mann & whole school Student Attendance
• Year Three – Joseph Doyle & whole school Numeracy and School 0perations
• Year Four – Matt Hart & whole school Literacy 
• Year Five and Six – Michael Nicolaides & International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme 
• Year Seven and Eight – Sarah O’Connor – Secondary Curriculum 

Leading across the school:

• Whole school Improvement, Data, Assessment, and Reporting – Ryan Ma
• Director of Teaching and Learning – Taxia Katsouranis 
• Primary Student Engagement and Wellbeing – Amanda Palombi
• Secondary Student Engagement and Wellbeing – Mark McInerny 

Every year level also has a designated Leading Teacher who supports their team in all areas of curriculum. However, due to the current shortage of teachers, they have been placed in the classroom. Please note that as soon as we can recruit educators for these roles, the Leading Teachers will be out of the classroom to support teachers with coaching and mentoring as well as provide Intervention and Enrichment to our students. A thorough handover will be conducted with the new teacher and parents will be given the opportunity to meet their child’s new teacher. Correspondence regarding these arrangements has been communicated to parents of students in these classes.

The Primary Leading Teachers are:

• Gramatiki Alexiou- Enrichment and Intervention 
• Prep- Sarah Mason 
• Prep- Anne Farrugia 
• Year 1- Rohan Crowle 
• Year 2 - Brent Syme 
• Year 3- David Vivoda 
• Year 4- Denae Vines 
• Year 5/6- Sarah Grenfell 
• Primary Specialists - Gramatiki Alexiou

The following staff are our Learning Specialists: 

• Deanna Kotevski
• James Peterson
• Stephanie Day 
• Kylie Puclai 
• Gemma Fowler 
• Montana Vundel Messis 
• Sophie Ryan (Secondary) 

Our Learning Specialists have a deep knowledge and expertise in high quality teaching and learning. They have a range of responsibilities which include supporting students and teachers across the school. 

School Council

Saltwater College will be calling for nominations for the following vacant positions on our College’s School Council:

• Four parent positions
• Two DET employee positions
• Two Secondary Student positions

Parents are invited to collect a nomination form from the office on Monday, 13th February along with an information sheet. Or email saltwater.p9.co@education.vic.gov.au to request for these to be emailed to you.

Nominations are to be submitted by 4.00pm on Monday, 20th  February.

Should the school receive more than six parent nominations, the school will hold a ballot where the families of the school will vote.

Parent Information Sessions

Shortly, you will be receiving an invitation to our parent information session. In response to the feedback we have received from parent opinion surveys and previous events, we have scheduled these to occur over two weeks, with each year level hosting their own individual session on a different night. We understand that some families may have prior arrangements, therefore making it difficult to attend. For us to deliver the same message to all our families, we will be providing a PDF (digital) version of the information presentations.

I look forward to seeing you at the information sessions.

Kind regards,

Jackie Daniali 

Principal