David's Message

Dear Sunshine Heights Parents and Carers,

We made it! Our Grade 6s graduated, our 3/4 students survived and thrived at camp, we danced and admired our student's artworks at the festive concert and art show. It has been an amazing term and year, and to use a gardening analogy, the seeds we have planted for the past few years have grown into amazing successes. None of this is possible without our parent community and your support, and we can't wait to recreate the magic in 2024. As a staff team we have utterly loved this year, and though we are all a bit knackered, we know how these incredible moments together tie the bonds of our community. 

I do want to share something with you all as a parent community though about our hopes for the school and how you may be able to help. Earlier this year our school applied for a Minor Capital Works Grant from the Victorian Schools Building Authority (VSBA), which is ultimately decided on by the Education Minister. We submitted an application for $500 000 to gain new toilets, which as you would all know as parents, the toilet facilities at our school are not suitable or acceptable for our students or a school of our size. 

Unfortunately, despite myself and our school council president showing Sarah Connolly MP (our local member) around the toilets earlier in the year; our students submitting testimonials about the impact of these toilets on their sense of belonging; and sharing photographs of the state of these facilities; our school was knocked back. What has been disappointing for us as a school is, even though we have hosted Sarah Connolly and Ben Carroll the Education Minister for their photo opportunities, and made submission requests for improvements, our school has had no major upgrades or improvements since 2009. 

We have an amazing community here. As your child's principal, I am unwavering in making sure we use the absolute best approaches to literacy and numeracy, and to engaging students in world class experiences. Our team of teachers and educators go the extra mile for our kids know they are worth every experience we create for them. For those of you who know me well, you know that I am equally spirited in ensuring our students have school facilities that match the quality of our community. This is not the case at the moment. Nearby public schools have received multi-million dollar upgrades, despite our school being older and having substantially more students. I find this unacceptable. 

As a parent community, we can do something about this. Both our local member and our Education Minister can be written to by parents to express our concerns that our toilets are not suitable, our oval is unsafe, and our buildings are in desperate need of a significant upgrades. Sarah Connolly has invited parents to email her and she can be contacted on sarah.connolly@parliament.vic.gov.au and Ben Carroll as Education Minister can be contacted on ben.carroll@parliament.vic.gov.au 

At my end, I have been in contact with the VSBA and expressed our dissatisfaction as a community with the investment of the department in our school, and will continue to press this issue. We will keep producing amazing experiences for our kids in 2024 and have some really exciting plans for the year. However, any support our parents can offer in sharing our dissatisfaction wider with our representatives is greatly appreciated! 

I'll leave you with a video of the Art Show that sums up my love for this year. An event that is as much about the processes that made the artworks as the final products. Seeing the passion of our students crystallised into thought-provoking, beautiful and even a few confronting artworks gave me hundreds of moments of joy in the space of a few minutes walking through. 

The very best wishes for a safe holidays, and we'll see you all next year!

David and the Entire Sunny Heights Team