Dear Parents and Carers,

School Administrative and Support Staff (SASS) Appreciation Week

This week is SASS Appreciation Week. Our SAS staff work tirelessly to maintain the day to day running of the school and support our students. These non-teaching roles are vitally important and combine with teachers’ work to ensure all students are provided with the greatest possible opportunity to reach their full potential. Our SASS staff are:

School Administrative Manager: Judith Dinsdale (Tues – Wed) and Melise Piccolo (Mon, Thurs & Fri)

School Administrative Officers: Tracey Haddock, Melise Piccolo (Tues – Wed), Carmel Impala (Mon-Thurs), Sieun Lee (Library administration – Mon & Fri).

School Learning and Support Officers: Sam Besgrove (Tues - Fri) , Sue Choi (Mon, Wed-Fri)

General Assistant: Dave Stopps

We are very lucky to have such dedicated, caring and efficient staff at our school.

Year 6 Canberra excursion

A huge thank you to the staff who planned, organised and managed the Yr 6 excursion to Canberra this week. Teachers who attend overnight excursions do not get paid for the after hours work that is required on these excursions. They are present and on call at all hours of the day and night ensuring all students in attendance are fed, get any necessary medication and feel safe during the 3 day, 2 night learning experience. Typically, these excursions are always on the go in a packed itinerary as the students visit museums, education offices, parliament house, the war memorial etc to participate in rich learning experiences that can only be offered in such an excursion.

Thank you to Mr Dean, Mr McSeveny, Mrs Luu and Mrs Dinsdale for going above and beyond this week. Without you, our Yr 6 students would not have been able to experience these wonderful opportunities.

I would also like to congratulate our Year 6 students for their behaviour and maturity while on the Canberra excursion.

Staffing Update

The Department of Education is in the process of rolling out a Temporary Workforce Transition Initiative which will see long term temporary staff gain permanent employment in schools across the state. This project has seen the following staff gain a permanent appointment at Dundas Public School in either a full time or part time capacity from the beginning of 2024:

Teachers – Claire Green, Anshree Singh, Connie Sheaves

SLSO – Sam Besgrove

SAO – Sieun Lee

Congratulations to these staff members… this is great news for our school!

Check In Assessment (Year 6)

During Week 8 -10 of Term 3, Year 6 students will participate in the Check-in assessment. The Check-in assessment is a NSW Department of Education online literacy and numeracy assessment available to support schools to assess and monitor student learning.

The assessment can supplement existing school practices to identify how students are performing in literacy and numeracy and to help teachers tailor their teaching more specifically to student needs. Students with disability may receive the same level of support during the assessment they would normally receive in the classroom.

· The assessment will be scheduled for our Year 6 students during Weeks 8-10

· All students will complete a reading assessment, writing assessment and a numeracy

assessment.

Tell Them From Me survey

Our school will be participating in the Partners in Learning parent survey, another part of the Tell Them From Me suite of surveys (student, teacher and parent surveys) on student engagement. The survey asks parents and carers questions about different factors that are known to impact on student wellbeing and engagement.

Running this survey will help our school understand parents’ and carers’ perspectives on their child’s experience at school. These include:

communication between parents/carers and staff,
activities and practices at home and
parent/carer views on the school's support of learning and behaviour.

This valuable feedback will help our school make practical improvements.

The survey is conducted entirely online on smartphones, iPads, tablets, laptops or computers. The survey will typically take 15 minutes or less to complete and is completely confidential.

The teacher and parent survey will be conducted this term and the student survey (Years 4-6) will be conducted early Term 4.

Although participating in the survey is entirely voluntary, your responses are very much appreciated.

We invite all DPS parents and carers to complete the Tell Them From Me parent survey. DPS staff are in the process of reviewing homework. Therefore, we have added a couple of questions on homework to the general survey. A reminder that you can select to change the survey into a variety of different languages. 

The link to the survey is below.

http://nsw.tellthemfromme.com/qx245

Library Stairs and fast-fiction book display

This week, we have had some beautiful stair risers installed showcasing book spines of some of our favourite books. The students love them already!

Mrs Bohan and Mrs Lee have been busy making improvements in our library for our students. They have created a wonderfully engaging display of fiction books. This display is organised in such a way to make finding books from specific authors much easier to locate.

School Bytes school permissions and payments

We continue to experience a number of extremely late permissions on School Bytes for school events such as the recent author visit. Receiving permissions and payments on the day of the event is a problem as we are required to give final numbers and payment to the relevant organisations before the event.

Sometimes, we have families give permission for their child/ren to attend an event but forget to complete the payment step. Both the permission and payment steps are required to complete registration for the child to attend/participate in an organised excursion or incursion.

As has always been the case, families can decide what they wish their child/ren to participate in.

We always endeavour to give our families plenty of time before scheduled events to ensure that we have final numbers the day before the incursion or activity.

We will no longer be accepting permission or payment within 24 hours of the scheduled event.

Father’s Day Stall Thank You

Thank you to our P&C and parent volunteers for running the Father’s Day Stall. We hope dads, or other special people, enjoyed their gifts.

Summer uniforms

Summer Uniforms are now in stock and can be purchased via the FlexiSchools App or from the Uniform shop.

Kindergarten enrolment for 2024 (reminder from previous newsletter)

Dundas Public School is now taking online enrolments for Kindergarten 2024.

Go to our school website and select the enrolment tab at the top of the page. A link to the page is below.

https://dundas-p.schools.nsw.gov.au/about-our-school/enrolment.html

The flyer below contains information regarding our Kindergarten Expo and Orientation sessions. Feel free to share this with friends/neighbours who may have a child starting Kindergarten.

Applications for Extended Leave -Travel during a school term (reminder from previous newsletter)

Families are encouraged to travel during school holidays. If travel during school term is necessary, discuss this with the school. Family holidays and travel taken during the school term are not considered leave unless it is for specified special circumstances, such as an important life event (wedding or bereavement).

Policy states ‘14.6. Where a principal considers that the travel is appropriate during school term, the principal should issue the parent with an Application for Extended Leave – Travel for completion and inform the parent that if the Application is accepted, the absences will be recorded as “L” – Leave.’

Applications for Extended Leave that do not include justifiable reasons, will not be approved for leave and a certificate of extended leave will not be issued. Following policy, these absences will be recorded as ‘explained but unjustified’.

Below is a link to the Application for Extended Leave form.

https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/policy-library/public/implementation-documents/pd-2005-0259-02-2.pdf

If the travel period exceeds 50 school days, students may be eligible to enrol in distance education.

Kind regards,

Lee Shipley

Principal

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