Principals` Message

 Over the next week our School Council elections ballot will be taking place to elect one parent representative to school council. School council plays an important role in the governance and oversight of the school, and it is vital to have parents as part of council. The ballot will take place from Monday 26th February and will close on Monday 4th March at 4pm. In the ballot all families will have one vote for their preferred candidate from our 3 nominees. Ballot papers will be sent home on Monday 26th February with students, along with some background information on our nominees. Ballot papers can be returned to Mary in the George St Office or posted back to school. I encourage all families to participate in the election to have your say on who you would like representing you on council. 

I would also like to acknowledge Matt Willis, our current president of school council, who is stepping down this year from council. Matt has been involved in school council for a very long time and has helped steer our school to the position it is in today. He has had a huge impact on Fitzroy Primary School and has been an exemplary school council president. I personally would like to thank him for all his warmth, advice, support, and help to me over the past year in my role as acting Principal. 

This week has seen some fantastic news with the completion of landscaping works and the opening up of the George St yard. All major works are now complete for the capital works project and we can enjoy the spaces in the building and yard. It was a great feel and energy in the George St yard this afternoon as families enjoyed the new seats and playground spaces. Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we worked through the last steps and can now enjoy the results of this work.

As we continue to get used to having two sites again we have continued to make adjustments to our processes and organisation. One change that we have made is to have playtime yard swaps only taking place on Monday and Tuesday each week instead of each day. This has been important for our F-2 classes who have been quite tired and have found the daily yard swaps fatiguing. Later in the year we will look again at more swaps but for the remainder of the term we will follow this new pattern.

The next two weeks will be a great time for students in our school with the commencement of the water safety/swimming program. Our students will be enjoying their daily lessons at Fitzroy Pool on Monday, Wednesday-Friday. It is so important for children to learn to be safe around water and learning to swim means they can safely enjoy the great rivers, lakes and beaches of Victoria and Australia. There will be some disruption to timetables and yard play for the next two weeks and the students will be quite tired each day, but they will definitely have a great time in the water.

Thank you to all the parents who came to school for the getting to know you sessions over that past week. Our teachers have enjoyed meeting the parents/carers of their students and have found it very helpful to form positive relationships between home and school. These connections help students to understand that we are all working together for their benefit and for parents/carers to feel comfortable in reaching out to our teachers. We look forward to continued positive relationships over the rest of the year.

Lastly we will be restarting our school assemblies on Monday 4th March in our multi-purpose room. We have had a small delay while we adjusted to the changes in buildings and sites, and while our new students in Foundation settle in and adjust to school life. Please mark this date in your calendar and join us at Napier St for assembly on 4th March at 3pm.

-Nathan Moore & Andrea Hennessey