Office Team Reflections 

Facilities & Compliance

With Covid 19 and a Pandemic declared Australia wide, term 2 commenced with  quite a different approach to kindergarten, one that was unfamiliar!

In the first few weeks of term, children and families were met with blue tape marking distance as we practised social distancing, families and  visitors were restricted from entering the kindergarten, unfamiliar faces were taking temperatures and signing in the children, who were then met by educators wearing personal protective equipment and escorting them to the bathrooms to wash hands prior to attending the program. Bottles of hand sanitiser were supplied for our educational teams and sanitiser spray was supplied to all GEKA services in order for high touch areas to be sanitised regularly throughout the day.  In addition, GEKA’s cleaning contractors were briefed on providing higher quality cleaning at the end of each day in order to maintain exceptional cleaning standards.

These circumstances, given the pandemic we were faced with and the changes that needed to be made to ensure community safety can be quite daunting for all and such a drastic change to our normal everyday lives.

It has been wonderful to witness that while the pickup and drop off was now different and everything seemed diverse from the outside, once inside the building  - the programs at each GEKA kindergarten were a continuous place of learning and exploration for the children. The laughter, the play, the exploration and the learning continued!

Thank you for cooperation during these unprecedented times and for working with us, enabling GEKA to  provide continuous protective environments where  the health and safety of all children, families and educational teams was protected as best as possible.

Have a safe and restful term break and we look forward to welcoming you all back to term 3.

Tania Peroni, Facilities & Compliance Manager

GEKA Finance

Term 2 provided huge challenges to the community with the COVID-19 restrictions on family and work, whilst trying to continue life as normal as possible. Many families faced the difficulties of home schooling, working from home, and deciding whether to send their kindergarten age children to our services, which remained open during term 2. Many families also faced employment uncertainty.

GEKA provided support to all families during this time, with special attention to families facing financial hardship.  GEKA was able to provide much needed assistance to many families whose circumstances required additional support in the form of fee relief, payment plans or fee deferment.  This assistance was provided well prior to the State Govt term 2 fee relief announcements so that families that were facing financial hardship were able access the fees they had paid, particularly as many families were not sending their children to our services during the term.

Additionally, during the uncertainty prior to the State Government fee relief announcements, GEKA kept families up to date via FlexiBuzz communications with information from Department of Education and Training.

GEKA Finance Team

Service Support

Term 2 has been quite different. When presented with challenging times and circumstances, we seek extra support from our community and contribute to where it’s needed. Throughout the beginning of Term 2, the GEKA office team provided support to each of the services by working in the program with educators and taking everyone’s temperature. All the children were extremely cooperative when getting their temperatures checked. This was most definitely an unusual experience but by doing so it also gave us the chance to meet every child that attended the service along with meeting their families, therefore creating new and memorable friendships. 

During this difficult time, GEKA provided each family with remote learning resources and ideas. To provide extra materials and engaging resources we worked efficiently with purchasing all different types of products, in which would allow your children with the opportunity to create and play as they would at kindergarten but at home.  

Dana Bitan, Service Support Coordinator