Operations (Admin, HR, Finance, IT & Facilities/OHS) Update

Administration Update

New Student Activity Locator

The Department has rolled out a new Student Activity Locator platform using Salesforce.

The new SAL can be accessed by visiting https://sal.educationapps.vic.gov.au. 

The buttons and links on the Portal and Xuno have been updated to the new link.

Staff must request access to the New SAL by lodging a service request through the DE Services Portal and filling in the following details in the service request:

Service: Select SAL from the dropdown

Short Description: Add SAL access for Jackson School

Description: Please add access for my account (insert eduPaSS ID Number) to SAL for Jackson School 4979.

All previously submitted SAL entries have been migrated over to the new platform.

Just a reminder, a SAL must be submitted at least three weeks before your excursion commences.

Please refer to the quick reference guide below to learn how to use the new SAL platform.

Gifts and Benefits

Just a reminder to staff, as the Christmas season is approaching, as per the department's Gifts, Benefits and Hospitality policy, any staff member that receives offers of gifts, benefits or hospitality valued at $50 or more must be declared regardless of whether the offer is accepted or declined and must be recorded in the online Gifts, Benefits and Hospitality Registry System (staff login required) within five days of receiving the offer. 

The exceptions are Gifts of Appreciation provided by students/parents/carers to members of the Teaching Service to express appreciation for the person’s contribution to the education of students. If the estimated value of this gift is more than $100 it must be declared, regardless of whether it was accepted or declined.

HR Update

Staff Personal Details on eduPay

 All staff must ensure their personal details, including mailing/contact details and emergency contacts, are correct and updated on eduPay.

These details flow into various systems and are used in emergency situations.

Please review the personal details menu item (Located on the left-hand side menu) on your Xuno Staff Dashboard. If any of your details are incorrect, please log in to eduPay and update your personal details, including emergency contacts. 

Please email Kristina Kamenar with the new details for vehicle registration number changes.

Please use this quick reference guide to verify/update your personal details in eduPay.

Please see Kristina Kamenar (HR Manager) if you still require assistance.

VIT and WWCC details in eduPay.

As a condition of employment, all staff are required to ensure their VIT or WWCC details are correct and updated in eduPay, including attaching a copy of their latest VIT/WWCC card.

If you have yet to update and upload your latest VIT/WWCC details in eduPay, please do so as soon as possible.

Please additionally ensure your employer details reflect your employment at Jackson School in MyVIT (Teachers) and WWCC Portal (ES Staff).

For ES Staff, please visit Working with children check - Update details (service.vic.gov.au) and update your employer to Jackson School and Child-Related Work Code to 44 Educational - state schools (all primary, secondary, technical and special schools)

Staff Absences

This is a reminder to all staff: If you are going to be absent from work, please complete the Staff Absence Form on the portal and call the staff absence line (03 9366 4322; Option 2) by no later than 7:00 a.m. on the morning you will be absent. 

Your leave must be entered on eduPay within 5 business days of your return to work, and any medical/carer certificates or stat decs must be uploaded to eduPay as a photo or .pdf file or handed to the general office. 

Required Document for Personal Leave

In the case of an application for personal leave (illness or injury) when you have chosen to use sick pay with a certificate, a required document is either a medical certificate or, if it is not reasonably practicable to provide a medical certificate, a statutory declaration. 

A Medical certificate is a certificate issued by a registered health practitioner, other than a registered student, within the meaning of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Victoria) Act 2009 (Vic).

The medical certificate or statutory declaration must clearly state that you are unfit for work and include a date range outlining the period during which you were unfit.

Attendance certificates from external healthcare providers are not a valid form of a medical certificate and will no longer be accepted as a required document. If you are absent due to a medical appointment and a doctor cannot provide a valid medical certificate, please use a statutory declaration as the required document.

When using statutory declarations, please ensure you complete the form correctly as the statutory declaration is a legal document. In addition, under section 19 of the Oaths and Affirmations Act 2018, for school related staff,only school principals or ongoing teachers can witness statutory declation. Please refer to Statutory declarations | Department of Justice and Community Safety Victoria for further information on how to complete and who can witness a statutory declaration .

In instances of carers leave where you choose to use carers pay with a certificate, the required document (medical certificate or statutory declaration) must state that the person needing care and support is suffering from an illness that requires care by another or requires care or support due to an unexpected emergency.

Long Service Leave and Leave without Pay

When applying for either Long Service Leave (LSL) or Leave without Pay (LWOP), all requests must be made directly to Anthony in the form of a personal conversation with sufficient notice but no sooner than two terms before the intended commencement of leave. Please also confirm in writing (email) to Anthony and carbon copy (CC) Matt Gravatt and Kristina Kamenar.

Where possible (with respect to our school's operational requirements), we will make every attempt to support the request for LSL or LWOP; however, there may be instances when LSL or LWOP requests are denied. Where long service leave is not granted, arrangements will be made to support taking the leave at an alternative date.

If Anthony has approved your LSL or LWOP request (Anthony will email you to communicate this approval), please log the request on eduPay as soon as practicable.

Time-in-Lieu

For all TIL requests, the principal must agree to prior approval (conversation and email) before the TIL is submitted to eduPay for approval. 

Any TIL that has not been required or agreed to prior may not be approved in eduPay. 

Unfortunately, staff voluntarily working overtime from their contracted hours is not considered TIL. 

Staff may also agree with the Principal to acquit their TIL instead of using their personal leave, providing this can be accommodated.

Time in Lieu Processing on eduPay

Matt and Kristina will manage time in lieu of whole school-managed events (e.g., SSG meetings), and staff do not need to log this TIL on eduPay. 

Staff will receive details of their time in lieu of acquittal via email after the event.

Finance Update

2024 Sub-program Budget Closing Date

To assist with end-of-year processing, including creating our 2025 cash budget, our 2024 sub-program budgets will close for new orders on Friday, October 18th, 2024.

No new purchase orders will be approved after this date. Please ensure all purchase orders are raised for end-of-year activities, excursions/camps, and curriculum-related purchases for your program(s) to continue until the end of the year.

All goods and or services must be purchased by the end of week 10 (13th December 2024) to allow us to settle all our creditor accounts by the end of the year.

Please see Anna or Matt if you have any further queries regarding the sub-program budget closure date.

2025 Cash Budget Submissions

As part of the Department's budget cycle,  we invite staff to submit sub-program budget submissions for our cash budget in 2025.

Submissions play an essential role in the budget cycle process by providing staff agency to ensure that any planned 2025 program goals are funded correctly.

Our initial estimates are we are predicting our revenue for 2025 to be similar to 2024 and expect sub-program budgets to be similar.

A form has been created to streamline the submission process. The form can be accessed using this link: https://forms.office.com/r/pCZAy1G6WS. Submissions are due by 4:00 pm Friday, 18th of October 2024. 

All submissions received will be reviewed at our school council finance budget meeting in November.

If you have any further queries regarding budget submissions for 2025 or need assistance completing the form, please see Matt.

Virtual Purchasing Cards

We were hoping we could roll out the virtual purchasing cards last term as promised; however, NAB, VISA and DE kept pushing the rollout date further and further. 

We are continuing to liaise with DE and NAB to confirm a rollout date. 

Once the system is rolled out, we'll provide staff with a quick reference guide and an optional professional learning session.

Virtual purchasing cards will be a landscape changer in the finance space, which will allow us to further streamline our procurement processes by allowing any staff to request a purchase card (no longer will you need to hunt Anthony or Matt down to use their cards) with a requested dollar amount (up to $15,000) through an app called Flexipurchase. Once the virtual purchasing card has been approved, staff will instantly receive the purchase cards, which they can then use online or with Apple Pay/Google Wallet.

Once the virtual purchasing card facility is available, we will work to close down our credit facility with some of our suppliers, including Woolworths at Work, Kmart, Bunnings, WEX Fuel Cards and Officeworks. 

If you wish to purchase goods and/or services from any of the above creditors (once we have the virtual purchasing card facility available), you will have to use a virtual purchasing card.

Additionally, once the virtual purchasing card facility is available, we will no longer process reimbursements to staff. 

Purchasing Reminder

For all purchases of goods and services, an itemised purchase order must be completed and signed off by the budget leader (for most staff, this will be your PLT leader) and either Matt, Anthony, Bernadette or Julie before the goods and services are ordered.

When completing your purchase order, all items attract GST unless you purchase fresh food. Please select the attracts GST button and enter the cost in the ITEM Cost (inc GST) field. If your item does not attract GST, enter the unit cost in the ITEM Cost (ex GST) field.

Please refer to the GST guide below to assist you with determining whether fresh food items have GST.

Any invoices without a purchase order being completed first will not be paid, and virtual purchasing cards will not be approved to staff without a purchase order being completed first.

We are continuing to be paperless where possible with our accounts processes. 

When you have ordered your goods and services and received the invoice, if it is in an email rather than printing it out, please forward it to accounts@jacksons.vic.edu.au. Please just let us know the purchase order number in the email.

If you receive a physical invoice, simply write the purchase order number on the invoice and either hand it to the office or email us a copy (photo or scan). You are no longer required to print out purchase orders.

Please see Matt or Anna if you need assistance ordering goods and services.

Procurement Policy

To ensure we comply with DE's procurement policy, please follow the below when ordering goods and services:

● If you plan to order a good or service that totals above $2,500, please see Anna, Karen, or Matt first. Additional paperwork and contracts must be completed prior to ordering the goods or services.

A formal written quote must also be obtained as part of this process.

Please refer to the 2024 SRP Reference Guide for information about which suppliers can be used to order goods or services and the login details and or process to purchase the goods or services.

Karen Hamilton will now oversee the whole school's purchasing and procurement processes, including those related to facilities, and ensure OHS compliance with all purchases.

Fundraising

A new fundraising request form has been developed to help us meet the requirements of DE's fundraising policy.

Under the fundraising policy's obligations, the school council must approve any fundraising activity for the school, and the principal must approve any fundraising activity for non-school-related charitable purposes.

Should you wish to organise and run a school-related fundraising event, please use the fundraising request form below.

All submitted request forms will be presented at the next school council meeting (which can take up to two months), and you will be notified via email of the outcome of the request.

No school-related fundraising can proceed without getting school council approval first. 

Please see Matt if you have any further queries or need assistance completing the form.

Loyalty Rewards Programs 

Just a reminder to staff: as per the department's Gifts, Benefits and Hospitality policy, staff cannot use their loyalty rewards program membership (e.g. FlyBuys, Everday Rewards, etc.) when purchasing goods or services for work purchases.

IT Update

SeeSaw Changes

Late in Term 3, SeeSaw rolled out a change that limits staff members connected to a class to a maximum of 20 staff per class. As most of our classes had ~35-40 staff attached per class, we have had to make some changes to the allocation of classes in SeeSaw.  All leadership, admin, allied health and inclusion staff members have been removed from all classes.

If you require access to a SeeSaw class, please raise an IT help desk call, and we'll try to add you where there is availability.

New Tranche of NSSP Notebooks

Certain staff members will receive new notebooks under the DE Notebook for School Staff Program (NSSP) over the coming weeks.

Pushp and Andy are in the final stages of testing and documenting the new deployment method for these notebooks.

Once finalised, we will provide communications to the staff affected by the changeover, including quick reference guides to back up your data on your previous notebook and set up your new notebook.

Pushp and Andy will also be available to support you with the rollout of the new notebooks.

Overnight Device Security

Just a reminder to staff, please ensure all devices (notebooks and iPads) are locked away each night and not left on desks or in visable view. All 1:1 student devices should be placed away in the allocated device storage/charging cabinet and the cabinet locked at the end of each day. Please do not provide the combination of the padlock to students. Should you require the current combination and/or would like the combination changed, please see Pushp.

1:1 Student Device Program - Laptops

We continue to work with our vendors to finalise the procurement of new student notebooks. We expect these new laptops will be rolled out later this term in preparation for the start of the 2025 school year. 

We'll notify staff once we have more information to share including confirmed timelines and devices.

eduSTAR Guest / eduSTAR A WiFi Networks

If any of your devices are connecting to either the eduSTAR Guest or eduSTAR A network, please contact Pushp/Andy so they can remove your device(s) from these networks.

There is a limit of 20 connections on both these networks, and with staff and student devices connecting to these networks, DE/Visitors cannot connect when required.

IT Support

If you experience an issue with any IT system or peripheral, please log a help desk call on the portal and Pushp or Andy will resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

For urgent IT support, please call extension 215.

Please log an IT help desk call by clicking the log IT service call button on the portal. rather than catching Andy or Pushp and notifying them of your issues verbally. Please be patient whilst Andy and Pushp work through the outstanding IT help desk calls.

IT Security

It is very important that we practice and model eSafety behaviour.  All students have their own devices allocated to them, and security settings for their devices are stringently set. 

Staff devices have different settings and, as such, are a risk to students' online safety. IT IS VITAL that staff, under NO circumstances, allow students to use staff devices. It is also vital that staff use lock codes on their devices should students inadvertently obtain their devices. 

Additionally, department email addresses should not be used to subscribe to private subscriptions and similar services (for example, social media (unless prior approved), online ticket services, and bill payments) and should never be used as 'recovery email' addresses for any other services. 

Subscribing to mailing lists and other services using Department ICT resources must be for Department purposes or professional development reasons only, and a different password must be used for all such purposes.

For more details, staff should refer to the Acceptable Use Policy Acceptable Use Policy for ICT Resources: Overview | education.vic.gov.au.

Facilities/OHS Update

Building/Grounds/OHS Issues

This is a reminder to staff that if you notice an issue with any of our facilities or grounds, including any OHS issues, it is vital that you log these issues on the portal using the OHS/Maintenance Request Form. 

The facilities team (Graeme and or Lyle) will action your request as soon as possible and provide updates where possible.

If you believe your request has not been actioned either quickly enough or satisfactorily, please raise your concern directly with either Matt Gravatt (Operations Manager) or Helen P. (Health and Safety Representative (HSR).

OHS - Chemical Register, Inspections, Spill Kits & Reminders 

Chemical Register

The OHS management team has worked  to overhaul our school's chemical register. 

The overhaul included standardising the chemicals (including but not limited to whiteboard markers and whiteboard cleaning solution, hand sanitiser, hand soap, textas, glue and glue sticks, paint, and surface cleaning solution) staff will have access to in learning spaces throughout the school, ensuring all chemicals are stored and labelled correctly in each learning/communal space, and each chemical has an MSDS.

Please find below our standardised chemicals list.

Should you need to purchase any chemicals (items listed above), please only purchase items from this list using the recommended supplier (COS/Zart Art). No variations/alternatives will be allowed to be ordered from other suppliers. 

Please see Helen in the first instance if you need to purchase any chemicals that are not listed/outside this list.

Any additional chemicals that staff may have in their rooms that are not on the standardised list must be removed as soon as possible. Helen will be visiting classes in week 1/2 to ensure chemical compliance in each room. 

Please see Helen or Matt if you require further assistance or guidance about the chemical register or the standardised chemicals list.

OHS Inspections

All staff are required to complete an OHS inspection form by the end of week 2.

Staff can complete the OHS inspections using an online form in eduSafe Plus.

Please refer to this quick reference guide to assist you in completing your room inspection.

Helen will complete the communal and outdoor areas.

Please see Helen or Matt if you require further assistance completing your OHS inspection form.

Spill Kits

Spill kits were deployed in centralised areas in each block to assist staff with quickly cleaning up a spill and reducing reliance on our facilities team.

The kits contain various items to help either mop up and clean a spill (water/urine) or cover a spill (vomit/feces) until an emergency clean can be organised.

When using the spill kits, please follow the safe work procedure and remember to use PPE equipment.

Please call the office if you require an emergency clean-up of vomit or feces or if you need any other related cleaning that can't be done using the spill kits.

The facilities team will regularly check the spill kits to ensure adequate supplies are available.

Please see Sharon if you require further assistance or guidance using the spill kits.

Electrical Management Reminder

• All electrical equipment in the school must be tested and tagged. 
• No equipment should be brought into the school unless it is tested and tagged.
• If you bring a new electrical item into the school, please see Graeme in the first instance so they can add it to the Electrical Equipment Register and ensure it is tested in the next round. (New items can be used for 12 months)
• Any faulty equipment must be reported as a hazard immediately. Do NOT use faulty items.

Working at Heights Reminder 

Reminder to staff that no staff are to put their feet more than 2 metres above the ground unless qualified to do so. 

Any work at a height of less than 2 meters must be done using a stepladder (not a chair or table!). A step ladder has been placed in a communal area in each building, and when using the step ladder, please follow the SWP – Safe Work Procedure.

Manual Handling Reminder

Please use the S.M.A.R.T. lifting method when staff need to handle an item manually.

Hand trolleys are to be used when moving any load more than 5 kg in weight.

OHS eLearning Modules

Please ensure you have completed your OHS eLearn modules on eduPay.

Staff will receive an email early next week outlining the mandatory eLearn modules that have not yet been completed.

All OHS eLearn modules must be completed by no later than Thursday 17th October 2024.