Footscray West PS Newsletter

Principal's Report

Principal: Brendan Millar

In this week’s newsletter:

 

News

  • Appreciations
  • Construction works
  • Being on time is important
  • Another safety reminder

Coming Up 

  • Friday Assembly
  • Secondhand Uniform
  • Swimming carnival tomorrow at MAC for qualifying students
  • Grade 3 Zoo Snooze camps in weeks 4 and 5
  • School Photo days are Thursday and Friday of next week
  • Cross Country Trials
  • Inform and Empower program/ Raising Kids in a Digital World information forum

Reminders

  • Curriculum contributions
  • Photograph and video permission requirements

News

Appreciations

We appreciate parents, carers and class teachers spending time thoughtfully having child centred conversations this week during the Parent / Carer Information Sharing Forums. The importance early in the year of meeting with your child’s teacher cannot be overestimated. In a regular year we do prefer face to face meetings and happily cater for the online as well. However, we appreciate our community understanding the challenging logistics of managing the classes while the forums were being held in a school shrunken temporarily through the construction site.

 

Prep Parent / Carer Information Sharing sessions will be held on Wednesday, 26th February during the day as this will coincide with the final day that prep students will not attend as a conclusion to the 1:1 Prep Assessment Program.  As there will be no space restrictions due to Prep classes not running, these meetings will be able to take place in your child’s classroom.  An online option will be available as well as required.

 

Construction Works 

Perhaps the word demolition should be the keyword this week? 

On Monday during our curriculum day, kids attending TheirCare had the first view of the demolition machinery ripping into the Gecko building. With most of the building demolished, students returning to school on Tuesday were treated to the sight of the last section standing, the music room and PE storeroom. Vale Gecko you served us well.

 

Being on time is important

We are again reminding parents and carers that school starts at 8.50am.  Students who do not accompany their grade inside are considered to be late. Students who are late are required to be signed in by a parent or carer. If you are arriving in the yard after 8.50am or your child is being dropped off at this time you need to attend reception and sign your child in.

 

Another Safety Reminder

Last week I mentioned concerns regarding unsafe and discourteous driving behaviours. Unfortunately, this week it is my responsibility to mention dangerous riding and scooting by several of our students after school. Taking risks with motor vehicles is never a smart move when biking or scooting.

Coming Up

Friday Assembly

Our second Friday assembly will be held indoors as our fall back option if the rain arrives as forecast. We will return to presenting the assembly as a webcast to the school, directly from the Dingo gallery space presenting in person to our Pupils of the Week, reporters, new grade 6 class captains and parents and carers with a direct interest. A decision as to the location will be made prior to recess.

 

Second Hand Uniform 

A reminder that the first opportunity to purchase second hand uniform will happen tomorrow straight after assembly. Remember our PA container is now located at the front of the school.

 

Swimming Carnival

Our annual Footscray District Primary School Sports Association Swim Carnival is due to be held tomorrow at the MAC. A team of 27 students from grades 4, 5 and 6 who qualified at last week’s trials will attend and be accompanied by Stratos and grade 5 team member, Tim Cannan.  The team will depart from Blandford Street at approximately 9.20am and is expected to return to school by 12.45pm. Our middle and senior school students love to represent the school and we anticipate the usual exemplary behaviour standards to match individual and team personal best efforts.

 

Grade 3 Zoo Snooze Camps

The Grade 3 camps will start next week - week 4 with 3MP (Marco’s class) attending. The remaining grade 3 Zoo Snooze camps will be held in week 5.

 

School Photo Days

A reminder to try and avoid student appointments if possible next week on Thursday, 20th and Friday 21st February. Due to the limited spaces for group and individual photography, we have extended the time for taking our class, individual and student representative group photos to 2 days. Photo day(s) is always a complex operation, heightened by our limited access to additional spaces, both indoors and out. As noted again last week there will not be the capacity to provide sibling photos - this decision will not be revisited, as we simply do not have the space and the staffing capacity to manage this additional non core work. An information flyer included over the last two newsletters is included in today’s newsletter. 

 

Cross Country Trials

Our annual trials where we encourage all students from grade 4-6 to have a go will be held on Friday of next week. Details on Compass.

 

Inform and Empower Program / Raising Kids in a Digital World Information Forum

Raising Kids in a Digital World online information session for parents

It is pleasing to see that over 50 parents and carers have booked (or rebooked on the new booking link) for the parent information session during week 5.  If you haven’t yet, please read the information I first posted last week (below).

 

Classes will participate in one of the multiple of webcasts for their grade level (prep, 1/2, 3/4, 5/6) at a time that suits their program. Parents and carers will have a comprehensive understanding of the nature and purpose of the Inform and Empower program if they join the parent information webcast on the evening of Thursday, 27th February.  Booking details included in last week’s newsletter are repeated (below).

 

With the financial support of Inner West Enterprises (the community outreach for the Seddon branch of the Community Bendigo Bank), FWPS is delighted to launch our relationship with Inform and Empower. www.informandempower.com.au. The team at I&E are local educators, who experiencing the concerns most of us feel about the ubiquitous nature of the internet and the negative impact it can have on our kids, started an online active education program for primary schools. This is webcast live each term in a series of programs catering for all age groups. We will be starting the program at FWPS from week 4. Thanks to the 58 families who, based only on the link provided in our return to school information post and some flyers that had been placed around the school, had already booked for what had been advertised as an onsite presentation from the I & E team. This quick uptake created a nice problem for us! Remember all we have been sharing about the space challenges during our big build? Well, we have decided that the gallery space is not big enough to meet the interest already shown, so with few alternative venue options, and with the agreement of our sponsors and the I&E team, we will switch to an online presentation - same date Thursday, 27th February running from 7.30 to 9.00pm. The booking link has been changed and families that had already booked have been emailed with the new link. Here it is: bit.ly/FWPSwebinar. I booked my spot and it only took a few seconds. If you have a couple of minutes, presenters Marty and Carley provide a brief video introduction. Digitally presenting their content in an engaging way is a key element of what they do.  

 

I hope we have a huge influx of our community online on this date.

 

A flyer with all relevant information and a QR code is included in today’s newsletter and at key locations around the school.

  

Please note that this is an event presented for adults.

 

By the way, our Inform and Empower online lessons for our grades will start next week with students from grades 1 to 6, with multiple viewing options over a period of two weeks (weeks 4 and 5).  The prep team will have their opportunity to stream their introductory session during week 6.  

Reminders

Curriculum Contributions

A parent / carer payment contribution Compass post was sent to all families on Monday of last week. There has already been a pleasing response. We really appreciate your support in making this payment for each of your children as soon as possible. Funds received are directed to subsidising the many curriculum costs in managing a school of this size. FWPS is a school that is underfunded based on the Schooling Resource Standard https://www.education.gov.au/recurrent-funding-schools/schooling-resource-standard for Australian schools. At FWPS we receive a lower rate of equity funding due to our local demographic than many other western suburb schools. This may be deemed as fair from a systemic perspective, but doesn't help us pay the bills! With annual fees topped at $300 (prep) we really think our community can do better than the 69% of families (grades 1-6) last year who contributed their expected contribution. There is an opportunity to pay by instalments. Please contact the office team if you would like more information or assistance.

 

Photo and Video Permission Form 

The Department of Education now requires parents and carers to sign this permission form annually (this used to be a requirement only when students started school or moved to FWPS). This requirement has made a ‘once off task’ for every child now a x7 task for every child. That is a lot of parent time and you can imagine how that is magnified from a schools’ administration perspective. If you haven't done this yet, please make this a priority to complete and return to the office (or classroom).  We really wish to encourage parents and carers to tick all 3 boxes to enable pictures or videos from class events (incursions, excursions, assemblies, sporting events and camps) and special moments (such as presentations and reports from assembly) to be able to be shown (or linked) in the newsletter and official school Facebook page.

 

Warm regards,

Brendan