Principal's Report
School Landscaping Work
Members of the community may have noticed the work being completed at the Watsons Road entrance of the school. Students will now be able to enter the College from the school crossing, walking into a safer walkway that will be well signed. The College name and emblem will adorn both of the walls that face Watsons Road. The project will be complete by the end of term.
Yr12 Theatre Studies Production
Between the dates of 21 May to 24 May, the Year 12 Theatre Studies class completed their major assessment for the year. The class presented the full-scale production of Moments, written and directed by Theatre Studies teacher Mr Joel Batalha. The students demonstrated extraordinary growth throughout the weeks preceding the shows, culminating in a powerful finale for the week. The student’s progress between their work in the Year 11 production and this one was noticeable and a true sign of learning confidence and development. The students in the class work on all areas of production including the design of all stage elements. They are to be congratulated for their work and cohesion as a group. The Theatre Studies productions are a massive part of the College calendar and the work presented is always of a high quality. Congratulations to the Year 12 students and Mr Batalha for their incredible commitment to the program. You should all be very proud.
Sporting Updates
Once again, Brentwood Secondary College has excelled on the sporting field. The Monash Cross Country event took place last week and the Brentwood team won the Junior and the Intermediate shield and were the champion school overall. Congratulations to our team and the coaches. Best of luck at the next level.
Our Intermediate Girls Tennis team were runners up in the state: a fantastic effort from a non-specialist school! Well done to the girls and their coach Mr Shah.
We had two boys placed in the top twenty in the state in the SSV Golf Championship. They played in trying weather conditions, both Sunny Lee and Sid Annangi should be very proud of their efforts. Thank you to Mr Parkes for coaching this team.
We also have our Senior and Intermediate Softball players in the SSV Championships this week. Good luck to the girls and their coaches; Ms Whitfield and Ms Mortimer.
Our Junior and Intermediate Girls AFL teams were visited by some Collingwood Magpies players during the week. There were lots of coaching tips, a question and answer session and an opportunity for the girls to take many selfies with the players. Thank you to Ms Nash for organising a great event.
Cyber Safety Evening
On Tuesday 21 May, we ran a Cyber Safety Parent Information Night for interested parents. The night was presented by Trent Ray from the Cyber Safety Project and was a great success. Before the night we surveyed our students to better understand their digital habits at school and at home and Trent used this information in his presentation. We will now be using this data to inform our student Cyber Safety programs and to review our Digital Technology Policies in the school. Parent feedback from the night was extremely positive and you can read some comments below.
“The presentation was highly informative and thought-provoking, particularly the use of real data, collected from the Brentwood students themselves. Best of all, the presenter was interesting, generous with his time and information, and kept nailing home the fact that parents must regularly communicate with their kids and stay in tune with what is going on with their kids' online habits. Online activity is clearly a critical and highly invasive, major part of this upcoming generation and future generations. It has added a whole new dimension to the way people connect, communicate, influence, present themselves and perceive others. Scary stuff actually, but like any of the challenges in life, can be successfully managed by open communication and being present for your kids.”
“This info night was very useful and eye opening, even for someone like me who is quite vigilant with cyber safety”
“Incredible! Very informative and so pleased you have teamed up with these guys and will be doing more work with them in the future. So, so helpful for reminding us about the importance of this, to keep having the conversations and for updating our knowledge to help us keep up.”
Leon Lilly, Associate Principal
Government Funding Announcement
On Thursday, May 30, the School Captains and myself hosted a visit from the Deputy Premier and Minister for Education, Mr. James Merlino and our local member for Mt Waverley, Mr. Matt Fregon. The purpose of their visit was to publicly announce that Brentwood has been allocated $4.6 million in the state budget that was announced on Monday, May 27.
This is a wonderful funding announcement that will be directed to building a state of the art VCE or Senior Learning Centre with the aim of replacing the portables in K-block. This investment in our school buildings will greatly benefit our current students in years 7-9 and our future students. It will also support us in continuing to provide Brentwood students with the best possible learning outcomes.
Over the coming months, the Principal Team will be working with the Victorian School Building Authority to develop plans for our new building. As with major capital works, the process from planning to finishing construction will take at least 18-24 months. I will keep the community informed as the planning and construction works occur.
John Ballagh, Principal