Principal's Report

Welcome Back

It was wonderful to welcome our students back to school on Monday with a short assembly. Term 4 is always a busy one, even though we start to lose the senior students early on. The Year 12s are back for their final 2 ½ weeks of official schooling, before heading into SWOTVAC and then their end of year exams. The Year 11s have 6 weeks of teaching time and the Year 10s have 8. Students in Years 7 – 9 have 10 weeks of official classes left, followed by the CONNECT Program. It’s all happening!

Child Safety

This is our regular reminder that all schools are child safe places; a safe place in both physical and online environments. We want all our students to feel safe and enjoy being at school. If your child shares information with you that they feel unsafe, please don’t hesitate to contact the Student Engagement Leaders (SEL) on their behalf, so we can support them. Years 7/8 Josh Davies, Years 9/10 Jenny Farrington and Years 11/12 Shantelle Stimson.

Emergency Management Plan (EMP)

In line with Dept. of Education procedures, our EMP is reviewed and updated every year. Our plan covers a range of hazards, such as bushfire, severe weather, medical emergencies, structure fires, intruders, etc. We develop specific response procedures to address these risks, such as conducting drills regularly, ensuring that our core procedures cover on-site and off-site evacuation, and shelter-in-place/lockdown procedures are well-rehearsed and understood by staff and students.

Our school is considered at risk of bushfire or grassfire; Category 3 on the Bushfire At-Risk Register. This means that we will either relocate, learn from home or close when the fire danger rating is Extreme in the Alpine Shire (our Local Government Area. Our school will close on days of Catastrophic fire danger in the North East district.

If we enact our Emergency Management Plan, we will notify you by email and Compass notification, with updates on our actions. Please do not come to the school unless directed to do so, as you may put yourself and others in danger. If there is anything we need you to do, we will let you know. In the event of an emergency that impacts telecommunications, we will endeavour to update you by phone call or text message.

For more information about our bushfire risk, please refer to the attached bushfire news article. 

VSBA Works

Accessibility works and toilet upgrades

Works progressed well over the holidays and we now have ramps at 3 of our entry points. We also had a set of automatic doors installed at the front entrance. We are waiting on some finishing touches, like handrails, and then this part of the project will be completed.

All toilet blocks in the main building are now demolished and while the use of the TAFE toilets is adding an extra hurdle for staff and students to navigate, everyone seems to be settling into the routine well. I’d sincerely like to thank the students, staff and families for their flexibility, and adaptation to taking these changes in their stride.