In this week’s newsletter:

Appreciations and News
- Welcome back
- Brendan on leave
- Works during the holidays
- SunSmart
- 2025 Learning Buddy Suggestions and Additional Considerations (Grades Prep to 5)
Coming Up
- Vision and Values Launch Day tomorrow (including sausage sizzle)
- Grade 3 and 4 Camps in 2025

Appreciations and News

Welcome back

Welcome back for Term 4! We hope all of our students had an enjoyable break and that families had the opportunity for some down time with them. Term Four is always a big one for both students and staff, but it is also exciting as we plan and look forward to 2025.

Brendan on leave

Brendan is currently enjoying some well deserved long service leave, and will return on Monday, 11th November. For any communications that require principal-class attention during this time, please email the school on footscray.west.ps@education.vic.gov.au or phone on 9687 1535, and ask to speak with either Liz Beasley (Acting Principal) or Carolyn Lockie (Assistant Principal).

Works During the Holidays

We thank all our teaching staff who spent time preparing for the new term throughout the holiday period. The workload of the teaching profession is immense, particularly at the moment, and while we encourage our staff to ensure they rest and recover during the breaks, we are well aware most are chipping away at this workload during their designated leave. Our students, your children, are the benefactors, so for that, we say thank you to our teachers.

We also had significant facilities work completed during the break. You might have noticed our freshly painted Lorikeet building, and the students noticed the new lino inside these rooms and painted walls in the Bilby and Dingo buildings. There was also lots of ‘invisible’ work undertaken, including the additional maintenance of air conditioning units and OH&S works. We thank Taleb, our maintenance manager, for overseeing this work during the break.

SunSmart rules apply

A reminder for families that Term 4 is a SunSmart ‘no hat, no play’ term. It was great to see most of our students with their hats on Monday - no one wants to miss out on the fun of play while stuck in an undercover area!

IMPORTANT/ACTION REQUIRED: 2025 Learning Buddy Suggestions and Additional Considerations (Grades Prep to 5)

A reminder that there is just over one week left to submit your child’s learning buddy suggestions, and any additional considerations (only if required).

Please refer to instructions at the bottom of this page for links and information about the process.

Coming Up

Vision and Values Launch Day Tomorrow - ‘Working together to create a better world’

We are excited to launch our new school Vision and Values tomorrow with a whole school celebration day. This will commence in the morning with a Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony conducted by Bunurong elder, Uncle Shane Clarke. We warmly invite all members of our community to join us from 9am for this occasion.

This will then be followed by a multi-age activities day where our students will be talking about our school’s vision of ‘Working together to create a better world’ and celebrate our four values; Belonging, Responsibility, Respect and Resilience. Students will be making Belonging bracelets, Respect badges, playing initiative games focused on Resilience, and planting sunflower seeds in pots to bring home for Responsibility.

The day will conclude with a usual assembly, where our Pupil of the Week students will be the first to receive awards with our new format certificate, featuring our vision, values and new icons.

This work has been a slow and steady process, with many people involved over the past eighteen months. We come from such a rich history of strong values at FWPS, with Tribes underpinning all we have done for nearly twenty years. It has been immensely successful both at school and in the homes of our families, and well recognised in the wider community. For us, any change needs to be meaningful, purposeful and able to meet our high expectations that our values continue to drive how we learn, work and interact with each other. Commencing our work with the Berry Street Educational Model this year made it the perfect time to undertake this change in our Vision and Values.

We want to thank the vast number of people involved in this process. This includes our community sharing their feedback via surveys and focus groups about what we need to hold onto from our past and what they would like to see prioritised moving forward, to student representative groups, staff working parties, significant School Council input and students entering our icon competition. We would like to say a big thank you to the ComPol subcommittee of School Council, and in particular, Tess Sketchley (parent of Lachlan in Grade 5 and Jude in Grade 3) and Katie Berman (parent of Sam in Grade 3 and Kiera in Grade 1) for their expertise in this field and the significant additional support provided throughout the process.

We’re excited for the next steps of this journey, as we go deep in how we live and breathe these values everyday at FWPS.

Sausage Sizzle tomorrow (Reminder: No canteen)

Tomorrow we will host a sausage sizzle for our launch day. The canteen is not operating and please note that sausage orders closed before the end of last term and cannot be purchased on the day.

We want to say a very big thank you to the parent volunteers who are ‘on the barbie’, as well as the coordinating Parents Association team, the TheirCare staff who are also assisting with cooking, and our office staff who have organised it all. An extra big thank you goes to the Flight family (Solomon in Grade 5) who are generously donating bread from their bakery for the day. TheirCare is also paying for the other items such as sausages and sauce - thanks to them! Funds raised from the sausage sizzle will be used to offset the activity costs of the day.

Grade 3 and 4 Camps in 2025

At the end of Term 3 and in the holidays, the Years 3 & 4 camps for 2025 were released to families over Compass for expressions of interest and deposits. Unfortunately, the timing of the camps is very early in Term 1, putting pressure on both us and families to finalise details this side of the summer holidays. We agree - this timing is far from ideal, but with school camps we often have very little choice in when we are able to go. One thing we try very hard to do is avoid the middle of winter (cold, wet and miserable, anyone?) This often means a Term 1 camp for our Year 3 & 4 students, as both the Zoo Snooze and Campaspe Downs camps are relatively new for us. Camps work on a ‘longest attending, first served’ basis, so the schools who have been attending for a long time get the earlier pick of dates (Term 4!) This is why our Year 5 & 6 camps are usually in Term 4, because we have been going to both of these camps for a long time. We also need to consider clashes with things such as NAPLAN, big sports events, curriculum days, swimming programs, photo day, and public holidays, just to name a few. We know this information doesn’t make it easier for families, but we hope a little understanding of the limitations in choice of times means we do our very best to provide the best camping experience possible for our students.

Cheers,

Liz Beasley

2025 LEARNING BUDDY SUGGESTIONS

Through this process, we aim for each child to have a minimum of one name on that list as a learning buddy in their 2025 class.

For the 2025 school year, we are asking parents and carers to collaboratively make their list WITH THEIR CHILD via the Google Form below. We kindly ask that all families sit down with their children to fill out this form and to discuss suitable learning buddy options.

This process will need to be completed by Friday 18th October 2024. There will be no extensions for families should they miss this deadline as we need to commence the grade placement process the following Monday.

Please use a different form for each of your children.

We have an expectation that students of separated families will collaborate on this process and submit only one response per child.

In order to be valid, each child's entry MUST include FIVE (5) different students from the same grade level. Where families do not choose to provide an entry, the child will be provided this opportunity to do so in class time.

Please note that submissions will be deemed invalid if:

- One child is listed more than once on your child's form

- Not all five spots are filled (i.e. we will not accept only one name on the form).

If the entry is deemed invalid, your child will be provided the opportunity to complete this process correctly during class time.

The five buddies listed are not preferential and will be treated as such during the grade placement process.

No further discussion or correspondence will be entered into at the completion of grade placements. This is your one time to have input into the process.

In making decisions for grade placements, teachers consider the needs of all students from a social, academic and behavioural perspective. At times, we are also faced with opposing requests from families, and we ask that you respect we may not always be able to provide great detail about our decisions, to ensure the privacy of others.

Please note that all communication on this matter will need to be received via this form only, no later than Friday 18th October 2024. You will receive an automatically generated email acknowledgement after submission. Please ensure your email is correctly listed.

Or use this link: https://forms.gle/g5GHBcjTv9oCAbDi6

2025 Additional Considerations for Placement

In limited situations, we may consider additional communications or requests from families regarding their child's 2025 grade placement.

There is a formal Google Form process for this (we will not be accepting phone calls or emails), and the due date is also Friday 18th October 2024. If you believe that the following listed considerations are relevant to your child's needs, we advise that this form must be completed by the due date.

Please note that requests from previous years do not carry over. If there are still concerns, new requests should be made for the 2025 year.

All matters will be dealt with sensitively; however, we must stress that requests for specific teachers, classes or friendships will not be accommodated. Throughout the grade placement process, teachers look for compatible learning partners and encourage the development of new friendships.

Requests related to learning, behavioural or social requirements will be considered on merit and in consultation with key staff members.

Again this year, families will be able to submit learning partner suggestions through a separate online process. Please see above for this specific link.

Requests related to learning, behavioral or social requirements will be considered on merit and in consultation with key staff members.

You will receive an automatically generated email acknowledgement after submission. We may seek further discussions or clarification with families.

Or use this link: https://forms.gle/2Dtfp7NXGa6iAs6R7

REPEATED MESSAGES FROM PAST NEWSLETTERS

Leaving FWPS in 2025?

If your family is planning to leave for another school next year, we would really appreciate you emailing us at: footscray.west.ps@education.vic.gov.au using the subject line (above) and letting us know your child’s new school so we can process the transfer.

From the Office Team