Welcome Back!

Welcome Back to Term 4!

I hope you've all had a well-earned break over the holidays. Personally, it has been a well-needed break to spend quality time with the kids as well as a short trip away to Melbourne and Shepparton with Han's family.

Congratulations to all the Cats fans! There has definitely been a buzz around Geelong over the last week. We decided to escape the parade in place of a cold day trip to a Ballarat instead. 

For our graduate staff completing their VIT inquiry projects, I hope you've managed to have a break these holidays. I look forward to reading your projects this week prior to your panel presentations on Thursday. 

Workforce & HR Changes

All staff on leave have now informed me of their intentions for next year. Lee Martin, Kate Aubrey-Rees and Mary Bradshaw have all now made the decision to cease their employment at Jackson School. Mary has left her temporary SSSO (Barwon) role and has taken on an ongoing community speech pathology position in Geelong. Kate made the move to Brisbane, Queensland during her family leave and has now decided to leave her Design Technology position for a life in the tropics. Lee has made the decision to resign from his position after many years of service at Jackson School to work closer to home following his long service leave. We thank all of you for your dedication and commitment to our students over the years.

Jan Brown has also made the difficult decision, after 50 years of service working for the Department of Education and Training (DET), to finish working at the end of the year. Jan has worked at Jackson School since 1980. Jan has been a teacher, primary department coordinator and most recently our Program for Students with Disabilities (PSD) coordinator. In June, Jan attended a celebration in June with then Deputy Premier and Minister of Education, The Hon. James Merlino. On behalf of our school community thank you for your years of service and impact you have had on our students.

Cody is leaving Jackson on Monday to start her maternity leave. We wish you all the very best with your new arrival and we hope to see you soon. Thank you Michael Lindner, who has been working with us as a teacher this year, for offering to stand in for Cody in 78C until the end of the year.

David Wragg will no longer be our permanent CRT during Term 4. ANZUK will provide us with two CRTs to cover absences and teacher's individual professional practice days in Term 4. 

Seven 12 month fixed-term Teacher Class positions (including two graduate positions) close this weekend. A number of positions will be advertised on Recruitment Online (ROL) to support our Workforce Planning for 2023. These will include:

• 4 x 12 month fixed-term ES Class positions 
• Ongoing Speech Pathologist
• Ongoing Occupational Therapist
• Ongoing Mental Health Practitioner (Secondary)
• 12 month fixed-term Program for Students with Disabilities (PSD) Coordinator

To view further information about the job openings and or to apply for any position, please visit either Recruitment Online or click on the careers button in eduPay and search for the job opening number. Please refer to this link for further information about applying for positions in eduPay/ROL. Potential applicants must address the key selection criteria and include a cover letter, resume/cv  and a least two referees. We strongly encourage any internal staff to apply for these positions. For teacher and education support class positions, we advice applicants to apply for all posted job openings rather than only applying for just a single position. 

To strengthen our succession planning, future leadership opportunities and other positions of responsibility will be posted as internal expressions of interests soon, including:

• Assistant Learning Specialist positions (Literacy and Numeracy)
• Assistant Leading Teacher positions (Mental Health & Wellbeing)
• Assistant PLT Leader positions (Primary/Secondary)

With the resignation of our ongoing staff members, there will be opportunities for future ongoing teacher positions for eligible staff members (three consecutive fixed-term contracts). These will become available once our fixed-term positions have been filled; this is in case of any administrative transfers of exisiting ongoing DET staff who apply for these roles from other schools.

We are also seeking volunteers of ongoing Teachers and ES staff who would like the opportunity to be a part of a selection panel to recruit these positions for 2023. If you are interested please let me, Robyn or Matt know.

VGSA 2022 (ES Work Conditions, Yard Duty, PPDs, TIL)

Helena will be on leave until Week 5 which may affect the operation of some Tier 2/3 intervention programs at the start of the term. We are having to modify how our Wellbeing Team run interventions from this term due to the changes in ES work conditions as outlined in the new Victorian Government Schools Agreement. We will let staff know of these changes and disruptions asap. Thank you for your patience will this as we work our way through the new VGSA 22 work conditions.

A revised Yard Duty timetable has been published with new Yard Duty zones outlining which teacher who has responsibility for each zone. For an adverse weather duty, teachers will still be responsible for the allocated zone of rooms. Please see the Operations page and check The Portal link for the most up-to-date version. 

Please check the PPD Timetable for your allocated day on the Operations page. Teachers on their individual PPD are required to attend work and can choose any of the following activities to complete:

• planning
• preparation
• assessment of student learning
• collaboration
• curriculum development
• relevant professional development
• peer observation including feedback and reflection

To view the powerpoint from our Term 3 Common PPD please click here: VGSA Implementation 2022.pptx. Attached is staff feedback from Slido: Term 3 2022 Common PPD.docx. Attached is also the new DET TIL Implementation Guide: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/hrweb/Documents/Time-In-Lieu-Guidelines.pdf. See the screenshots of how to input TIL into EduPay below.

COVID Overview & Operations Guide Update

The National Cabinet met on 30th September 2022. You may have seen on the news that First Ministers agreed to end mandatory isolation requirements for COVID-19 effective 14th October, with each state implementing the change via relevant public health legislation. For more information, please visit: https://www.pm.gov.au/media/meeting-national-cabinet-1 

There will be no change to the COVID settings for school operations for the start of Term 4. Further information will be provided from DET in the first two weeks of term regarding any changes to isolation requirements and/or other settings. I have a state-wide Principal Briefing on Tuesday with David Howes (Deputy Secretary for Schools and Regional Services) who will provide more guidance on our next steps and whether special schools will or won't be exempt. 

Download the updated School Operations Guide below. The updated School Operations Guide and COVID-19 resources are now available on the Policy and Advisory Library, on the department’s public website.

DET strongly recommends staff wear masks when indoors to keep our community safe. We have a large supply of N95 or equivalent masks available from the office. 

The Victorian Government is providing another delivery of Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) in Term 4 to schools. We have RATs for staff until our new supply is delivered, staff can collect these from the office as required. Please return any uncollected student RATs to the office at the start of next week. It is recommended that rapid antigen tests are used by students and staff when symptomatic. Rapid antigen tests are also required to be used for five days if a student or staff member is an identified close contact of a confirmed case, and they are attending or working at a school onsite. 

If staff or students receive a positive test result at any time, they must continue to report this through the Department of Health system (Rapid antigen tests | Coronavirus Victoria) or via the coronavirus hotline at 1800 675 398. Staff must also report a positive result to their school using EduPay, on the day they receive a positive test result.

Buildings & Grounds

Over the holidays a number of maintenance and minor works have been completed. The front entrance and Block 2 (Years 5-8) corridors have been painted. Around the oval PE shed has been concreted with gates at the rear for further storage. The garden beds in the courtyard have been planted in place of the overgrown trees which were removed in the last holidays. As we approach the start of our Asset Management Plan (AMP) we need to start removing any unwanted resources and furniture which will not be transferred into our new buildings. We will not have enough storage for everything during the building processes. A skip will be ordered soon for us to begin to remove any rubbish and unwanted items onsite.

Electronic gates have been fitted to our rear car park and bus zone. The entry gates will be open from 7-9am. The exit gate do not open automatically on approach with a vehicle. These will automatically be set to open between 2:55-5pm every weekday. To exit the rear car park any other times you can use the G-Remote app to open these gates. Please check the IT Update page for how to "refresh your permissions". We will be holding an IT Support Workshop on Tuesday at 3:15pm in the staffroom to support staff with any IT issues or queries you may have (Gates, Printing, Dashboard, iPads, Apple Classroom etc). 

Thank you to Phil Cox for managing these projects over the holidays.

Jackson Learner Profiles & Dashboards

To support our knowledge of our students and information sharing, this term staff will work through updating Learner Profiles in allocated Monday SSG time, Tuesday professional learning times, Jackson Learner periods to support and strengthen transition through Jackson. As we approach the Disability Inclusion Reform it has never been more important for us to document ongoing levels of adjustment we provide to our students. Please also ensure that any SSGs you have held in Term 3 are documented in the Learner Profile template (Prep to Year 12). We are allocating additional time to this activity to strengthen the quality of our documentation across the school. 

To also support with our knowledge and understanding of our Jackson Learners, we have revised our Jackson Learner Dashboards to include Attendance, Incidents and a holistic Jackson Learner / Student View page. This can be used by staff to view a snapshot of individual students, contextual groups of learners (CGOLS) in their class, year level, cohort or whole school. Access to the Jackson Learner Dashboard is available as a tile on The Portal as well as a tab in Microsoft Teams in Staffroom (General). For more information, please see the Jackson Learner Dashboard page. Thank you Robyn for leading this initiative aligned to our Lyn Sharratt school improvement work.

Other information in this Termly Bulletin includes: 

• Updated Active Supervision/Yard Duty Timetable & new PPD Timetable
• Sub-program budgets (purchase order system) will close at the end of Week 5 (4th of November 2022) for any new orders
• A reminder to upload your new VIT card or WWCC card to EduPay. Guidance is available on the Operations page
• IT Support: New ES Notebooks, New Photocopiers, New Rear Gate G-Remote Update, Apple Classroom Videos/Guide
• Jackson Termly Dates

A reminder that daylight saving time in Victoria began at 2:00 am on Sunday 2nd October. Don't forget to change your alarm clocks as there is no Curriculum Day to start the term.

I look forward to seeing you all on Monday. Enjoy the rest of your weekends. 

Anthony