Principal's Report

- Tania Sorbello

Welcome Back and Thank You

Welcome back to our students, staff and community! It has been lovely to see old friends and new reconnecting and sharing news of their holiday adventures. Our students have settled in incredibly well and are enjoying the opportunity to begin a new year of learning.

On a personal note, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our school community and staff for the positivity and enthusiasm that has been brought into 2024. Whilst we have had some changes around staffing, the children have settled into their new learning environments and are building new social relationships quickly. For those cohorts that have become new multi age groups, it is lovely to see new learning communities and friendships emerging. I am incredibly proud of our school, our students, our staff and our families and am honoured to lead such a vibrant, child focussed community.

Staffing News

Our 2024 staffing profile is as follows:

Leadership Team:

Principal: Tania Sorbello
Assistant Principal: Toby Russo
Leading Teacher – Disability and Inclusion – Jake Mutimer
Learning Specialist – Literacy Curriculum Leader – Joe Dykes
Learning Specialist – Numeracy Curriculum Leader – Hannah Caldow
Wellbeing – Shared between Toby and Jake

Foundation

Year 1 / 2

Year 3 / 4

Year 5

Year 6

PAS

Anja

1/2AO

Angie

1/2PT

Paul

3/4JM

Joe and Margaret

3/4ST

Sam

5EP

Evie

6BA

Brad

PBM

Bronte

1/2CB

Charmaine

1/2ZP

Zoe

3/4NB

Nathan

3/4TR

Tony

5RB

Refi

6HK

Hannah and Kathy

PML

Molly

1/2EJ

Evey and Jake

3/4SE

Sarah

PTJ

Tristen

Specialist Classes
PE	Music	Italian	Visual Art	Mandarin 5/6
Ben	Tanya D	Dianna	Maddi	Angie

Communications

With a new year upon us and some changes in our staffing and leadership groups, we thought this would be a great opportunity to share with you a communications diagram that may assist you with who to contact about any queries you may have. We hope this provides you with a clear path of communication relating to any ideas, queries or concerns you may have:

Building Project

The building project continues to bubble along and, whilst we continue to anxiously await the handover of the remainder of the Stage One, there is a lot happening internally. Over the holidays, plaster work was undertaken in the upstairs classrooms in the extension area and further mechanical works were undertaken in preparation for a handover in the next few weeks. Although we have unfortunately had a number of setbacks during our build, we are excited to have the first stage of the build complete by the end of February (all going to plan…).

Upcoming Events

Parent / Carer -Teacher Meet and Greet

Our Parent / Carer - Teacher Meet and Greet afternoon is scheduled to be held on Wednesday 21st February 2024 from 1:20pm – 6pm. These 10 minute appointments will be an opportunity for you to meet your child’s teacher and share any relevant and important information about their learning preferences. Appointments will open for bookings early next week. Keep an eye out on Compass for when times are released.

Students will finish at 12:45pm on this day so, if required, please contact TheirCare for supervision for the afternoon.

Welcome Picnic

Our annual Welcome Picnic is scheduled to go ahead on Friday 16th February from 4:00pm – 7pm. Bring along a picnic blanket and some nibbles for a great evening of reconnecting with friends old and new.

2024 Student Led Gender Equality Project

We are excited to share with our community that FNPS has been selected by the Department of Education as the pilot school for a new Student Led Gender Equity Project to be co-delivered by the DET Rights Resilience and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) and Women’s Health in the North (WHIN) teams throughout 2024.

The Building a Respectful Community (BRC) Partnership, who will work with RRRR and WHIN throughout the project, is a group of more than 20 organisations in Melbourne’s Northern Metropolitan Region. The organisations in the Partnership have decided to work together to make sure that all of us, no matter what gender we are, feel safe and included, and are treated fairly and with respect, in all the places where we live, work, study, exercise, and spend time together.

The project will be delivered to our Year 6 cohort between Terms 1 – 3 and will begin with an immersion into understanding the project, before our students embark on a process of identifying a key area of interest that they would like to explore further. This will culminate in the children passing the baton to our Year 5 group to continue this important work into the future.

We are very privileged to have been selected as the pilot school for this project. Being the only school in Victoria undertaking this important and progressive work is a wonderful opportunity for our children to delve into current social issues and become agents of change.

Please refer to the flyer below for an outline of the project and its progression throughout the year.

An information evening will be held next Wednesday for our Year 6 families online at 5:30pm. Please refer to the Compass alert sent earlier today for more information, or contact myself or your child’s teacher.

Welcome to our 2024 Prep students and families!

Finally, what a wonderful beginning to their primary school journey our 2024 Preps have made! It has been a joy to see how quickly and comfortably the children have settled into school routines, and how enthusiastically they are embracing their learning.  So many little blue t-shirts zipping around the yard: playing together, making friends and navigating this exciting new world! 

Attached to our new Prep students, we also have a number of new families. Make sure that you say hello to the new faces when you are dropping off or picking up your children.

Together we make a community!