Principal Message

Dear Families,

Hope you all had a fabulous long weekend. I saw some of the Grovers playing footy on Saturday and some more playing basketball in the Ballarat tournament! Hope you all had a win or two! 

Weather:  With the cold and wet setting in, please know that we adjust our indoor/outdoor play accordingly… Too wet or too windy or both – we have the break indoors, just as we do when it is extremely hot!

Supervision: Another friendly reminder that supervision in the playground begins at 8.45am. PLEASE use Camp Australia if needed and do not drop children off early in the morning. Staff are busily preparing for the day ahead and are not on supervision duties.

Athletics: Good luck to all the Year 3-6 athletes competing tomorrow at Landy Field. Mr Horbury has planned a great day and is in the process of ordering the nice weather! Please dress appropriately and take warm clothes and even a raincoat just in case. Thanks to all staff involved and to the parent volunteers to make this happen. 

Reports: Staff are busy finalising assessments and report writing and there should be no surprises to families when they receive them. At times students make terrific progress at or above the expected level and sometimes, they don’t. This also applies to student behaviours across the school. Let’s keep working as a community to help those who need support in their reading, writing and maths – and also with behaviours. Staff are asked to communicate this with families in our parent teacher meetings, this week and next week to ensure we are all on the same page and are ready for a great Term 3 of work. Thanks to those families who have signed up for the mid-year conversations with class teachers and I hope you pop in and check out the specialist programs too while you are onsite.

Facilities: The top basketball works are nearing completion with a new fence being installed today and tomorrow so hopefully it will be back in action by next week. This will be the final stage of the flood mitigation works from over 2 years ago! You may have also noticed new Soccer goals on the soccer pitch installed by Mr Kev on the weekend – Thanks Mr Kev. We were fortunate to receive $2230 from the Ocean Grove Rotary team that have contributed to the costs of these new additions. Thanks to Rotary for your ongoing support of OGPS and we hope our community continues to support your fundraisers such as the Great Barwon River Duck Race! We are also adding a fence to the soccer pitch to prevent balls being kicked into the lower playground area – and then we can re-establish the garden in between these areas. If you’d like to help re-establish this area, please let us know at the office.

Staffing: The only constant thing in education is CHANGE! Each year we set a plan in place for staffing, academic outcomes and much more and sometimes changes happen. We will experience some change next semester in our staffing profile as the wonderful Lauren Baker retires at the end of this term. Lauren has been a staff member at OGPS for over 25 years and has decided that this is the right time for her and her family to move into their next phase of life. Lauren has been a dedicated teacher to so many OGPS students, has been part of many teams on staff and will have left her mark on so many families and staff. On behalf of the wider OGPS community, we thank Lauren for all her work, commitment, care, advice and teaching over her career. We sincerely wish her and Tony all the best on their new adventure in Metung and will look forward to hearing about life after education. If you see Lauren, please congratulate her on her career and wish her all the very best. We will welcome Donna Heffernan into the classroom to replace Lauren. Donna is an experienced teacher across many schools and will do her best to replace Lauren – no easy task but I know Donna will be up for it! 

Have a great week everyone…stay warm.

Scott McCumber

Principal