Dear Clayton North Primary School Community

We are into the second half of Term 2!

It has been a busy few weeks since our last newsletter was published. Josie and I have attended the 3-day Monash Manningham Principal Conference, we have begun our school review, and staff have started writing their semester reports.

Conferences are great professional learning and networking opportunities. They also provide information on best practices, what other schools are doing, and what we can do to improve our school. Josie and I have returned with a couple of areas to focus our efforts on, to further support student learning and wellbeing. The first stage of our school review is also showing similar aspects. We should have a clearer plan by the end of this term.

Semester reports are underway and will be available to parents in the last week of term, on the 26th of June. This will be our first set of reports using Compass as the new platform. The uptake of Compass by the community has been extremely positive so far. As has been the case previously, reports will not be in printed format; I encourage parents, who are having issues logging into Compass, to contact the office before the last week of term to ensure that you can see your child's report.

In the last newsletter, I mentioned the new school vision and your involvement in the process. I invite your feedback on the two statements so that we can make a final decision. Please click on the link below to select the statement that you believe is most suitable to our context and our community.

School grounds and student pick-up

Clayton North Primary School is a great school, and one of the elements that make it special is the vibrant community that surrounds it. As a school, we greatly value this and support parents and carers in nurturing the bond between children, families and the school with safe practices whilst on school grounds.

We have put several things into place to ensure student safety:

Rubber-matting the playgrounds
Locking external gates to the school during school hours, and requiring all visitors to enter via the office
Updating Child Safe policies
Fixing the path to the Bike Shed to ensure students do not ride through the staff carpark
Signs to direct students, parents/carers and visitors

One aspect that remains to be addressed - the time that some students and families linger on school grounds after student pick-up time at 3.30pm, often well past 5pm. From an OHS perspective, this is of concern as office staff leave at 4.00pm every day, and staff are involved in meetings on Tuesdays through to Thursdays, and leave by 4pm on Mondays and Fridays.

Another related issue is the parking problem faced by parents at pick-up time. There are only a few parking bays available outside the school, and it does create an issue when parents take up a spot for longer than it takes to pick up children and leave.

And so, for the benefit of students, staff and the community, I am seeking your support in the school's expectations - the school is open to parents/carers to collect students from 3.30pm until 4pm. After this time, it is expected that all parents, students and other children will have left school grounds, and staff supervision for the day will conclude at 3.45pm.

For families who wish to extend their social time with one another, please consider the Princes Highway Reserve within walking distance from CNPS. The reserve boasts an outdoor fitness hub, a playground with swings, slides, and other equipment for children, a walking track, cricket nets, seats and shelter, much more than what is on our school grounds.

In the event that children are not able to be collected at 3.30pm, they must be enrolled in the Camp Australia after-school-care program. Please refer to the last page of this newsletter for further details and information about the onsite after-school-care program.

Inspire Robotics School Holiday Program

"Inspire Robotics is a forward-thinking company dedicated to bringing real-life engineering projects into the classroom. Many students never get the chance to work on real engineering projects until university and grow up thinking that engineering and STEM are boring or 'not for them'.

We have already shown the Grade 4 students how exciting STEM can be by launching model rockets, and we would love to extend our programs to students in Grades 3-6.

We are offering an Animatronics program, where you can design and bring to life your favourite character! Our holiday program will take place in the first week of the Term 2 holidays, on Thursday 4th July. Supervision will be provided between 8:30am and 4pm.

Please visit our website:

https://www.inspirerobotics.com.au/index.html to view all our amazing programs.

Click ‘After-school’ to book in, and experience a truly one-of-a-kind STEM program."

Ben Stolz (Inspire Robotics)

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