Message from the Principal 

Welcome back to the new school year to all our families and a very warm welcome to the new families joining our Greenhills Community in 2025.

 I hope you all had a terrific summer break and enjoyed lots of quality family time. How good was the weather! 

2025 will be a very exciting year for our school. We will continue to work proactively to further develop our home-school partnership as we strive to ensure that our students are provided with an environment and experience that enables them to make strong connections, grow their curiosity and embrace challenges. 

Greenhills has so many strengths as a school community and this school year is another opportunity for us to take the next steps to keep ensuring that our school is a G.R.E.A.T. place to be, learn and grow.

PHOTOS OF THE WEEK

We welcomed our students and families with a red-carpet experience on our first day of school yesterday. This was complete with music and bubbles. It is always a real joy seeing the smiles and excitement on the faces of our students and of course the just as big smiles from our parents and carers with the knowledge that school is starting back. 

Whilst it was a Thursday, this is the type of fun and buzz we try to start every school week with our Monday Madness. I wonder what we have in store for next Monday?! 

THREE IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW

1. Our theme for 2025 is “Using Our Strengths To Thrive”. 

The research on human strengths is a fairly new area in positive psychology and largely based on the work of Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson. Our signature strengths are those strengths that best describe the positive aspects of who we are. These strengths are strong capabilities in us, and they are probably engaging, energizing and comfortable for us to use. Finding ways to use and express these strengths are likely to bring us all many benefits and help us to create our best lives.

Greenhills Primary School has some very significant strengths. These help to make our school such a G.R.E.A.T, place to be. As a school community, if we focus on building and growing these strengths, we will help our team of staff, students and families to:

• Provide a sense of direction.
• Develop confidence and self-esteem.
• Generate a sense of vitality and energy.
• Engender a sense of happiness and fulfillment.
• Achieve your goals.
• Be more engaged at work and perform better.
• Boost motivation by thinking about your strengths and how to use them.
• Help to face challenges (using strengths).

Connection, creativity and challenge are the cornerstones of our school vision. Working collaboratively with a focus on “Collective Responsibility” is at the centre of everything we do at Greenhills. Talking about and using our strengths within and across our whole school community is a way of strengthening our connections and ultimately ensuring our school provides the best opportunities and environment for all of our students.

Each year we also use a picture story book as a strategy to promote our school focus and message for the year. All classes and specialist areas engage with the story, and this enables us to have a consistent resource to discuss and explore. We have been doing this for a number of years and feedback from our families is that it provides a common talking point at home for those with children in different areas across the school.

Our 2025 book is Cay & Adlee Find Their Voice by Cali & Russ Quaglia. If you would like to borrow a copy of the book, some are available from the office. 

1. Holiday Works Update

Our grassed oval project is well on the way. Late in the school holidays, the surface was hydro-seeded using a four-grass mix (designed for school use!). We are now eagerly watching the space to see the grass grow….I’m sure there is a saying about this 😊. Hopefully by the end of this term or early next term we are ready to take the fencing away and get this valuable and special play space back! In the meantime, we will continue using the Djila Djerring (gym) during lunchtime on a rostered basis.

Works to refurbish the portable in the corner of the school are also largely complete. This has included new carpet and a new interior roof. The funds for this project were raised by our PA and families last year including our Trivia Night. Thank you to everyone that contributed in some way. We are new very close to adding another teaching and learning space to our school landscape.

Over time we are also aiming to replace / fix / paint the external doors around the school. During these holidays we started with the doors to the library, art room and music room.

1. 2025 Annual Implementation Plan

There are two main goals as part of our 2025 Annual Implementation Plan. These are:

As we progress through the term, we will share more details about some of the specific actions and plans we have to help us achieve these goals.

WHAT’S HAPPENING @ GREENHILLS 2025

MEET WITH THE TEACHER - PARENT MEETINGS

Our optional “Meet the Teacher” - Parent/Teacher interviews will be held on Tuesday 11th February between 3.50pm and 6.50pm. Whilst these interviews are not compulsory to attend, the main purpose is for parents to meet with the teacher and pass on any relevant information that will assist our students to have a successful year. Each classroom teacher has also sent a link to a Google form where you can share information with us. In this way, if you are unable to attend you can simply complete the form and we will still have what we need to ensure we do our best to build strong connections with all of our students. 

Bookings are made through Compass so that you can select from the times available which suit you best. These are now open tomorrow and close on Monday 10th February at 4pm.

BE ON TIME FOR SCHOOL EVERY DAY

A reminder that our classrooms are open from 8.55am each morning. We know that getting off to a GREAT start each day is critical for learning, so we are encouraging everyone to be on time and ready to go inside classrooms before the 9am bell.

At the other end of the day a bell will ring at 3.30pm where students will be dismissed and again at 3.45pm. This is a reminder to any student who remains unsupervised that they need to report to the office so that we can ensure they get home safely as yard supervision finishes at this time each day.

ROAD SAFETY AROUND SCHOOLS

Speed zones, pedestrian crossings and parking restrictions around school are there to improve the movement of traffic during peak times and maximise safety for children and road users.

It is vital that adults, we lead by example and set good road safety practices travelling to and from school. As such we are asking all parents and carers to observe and obey parking signs and in particular No Stopping and No parking signs. 

Banyule City Council have asked us to remind our school community that it is an offence to: 

• double park by stopping next to a legally parked vehicle, even for a short time or to drop off/pick up passengers
• Stop or park across a driveway, footpath or dividing strip 
• Stop or park within 10 metres of an intersection or corner that doesn’t have traffic lights
• Stop or park across or in a bus zone.

Council Local Laws Officers will be active around our school area to issue warnings and fines.

PRIVACY INFORMATION

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Department of Education’s Privacy Policy.

Please take time to remind yourself of the school’s collection statement which is included in this newsletter.

For more information about privacy, see:

https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Pages/Schools-Privacy-Policy-information-for-parents.aspx

 This information is also available in nine community languages.

HAVE INPUT INTO OUR SCHOOL…SCHOOL COUNCIL NOMINATIONS NOW OPEN

We know that one of our school’s key strengths is our strong parent input and involvement. Our School Council is one the main forums in which parents and staff work together for the benefit of all our students. At the beginning of each school year, we have a number of vacancies for School Council. There are 4 x Parent member positions to fill this year for a period of two years and one casual vacancy for a period of 1 year. If you are interested in nominating, please collect a form from the school office or contact me and I will arrange one to be sent home. These must be lodged at the office by 4pm Friday 7th February.

Please contact me if you would like more information about being a parent on our School Council:

James.penson@education.vic.gov.au

James Penson,

Principal.