Principal's Report

In this week’s newsletter:

Covid is again making its unwelcome presence felt, with multiple staff and students currently absent from school for this reason. Please assist by keeping your child home if there are flu-like symptoms being experienced amongst your family members.  A comprehensive article is included in today’s newsletter.  In addition there are a number of other illnesses, including tummy bugs affecting our community.  We appreciate all families who have exercised caution.  Today nurse Zowi contacted a substantial number of parents and carers requesting them to collect their children early.

• Appreciations and Acknowledgements
  • Mother’s Day and Special Person’s stall
  • Educational support staff appreciation day
  • Visit of the Netball World Cup and Netball Super Cup
• Coming up 
  • Hoodie Up for Autism and IDAHOBIT Day
  • Remaining Prep 2025 information session
• News…
  • Education Week acknowledged in Week 8
  • Attitudes to School Survey
  • Student reporting 
  • Berry Street Education Model at FWPS 
  • FWPS’ Vision and values Design Competition 
  • Camps and excursions costs
• Repeated (and updated messages)

Appreciations and Acknowledgements

Mother’s Day and Special Person’s stall - Last week's stall was a great success. We really appreciate the work of Parents Association members and additional helpers. A huge thanks to key planners; Andita Satia, Rebecca Pratt, and Beth Scholes, as well as the in excess of 20 parents and carers who assisted on the day. We were very pleased to have a wonderful turnout of dads – a great sign of changing times and attitudes. Please look out for the Parents Association report also in today's newsletter for more on the stall, as well as other Parents Association plans that are coming up. Please note that the next PA meeting will be held tomorrow (Friday) from 9:00am in the Staff Room in the Wallaby. All are welcome. A special acknowledgement to Parents Association executive members; Clare, Alicia and Sharee.

Educational Support Staff Appreciation Day - Today marks the annual day that we celebrate the work of our ES staff.  We are fortunate to have a wonderful support crew working in the office, classrooms and grounds at FWPS.  We held an appreciation morning tea, catered by the teaching and leadership teams and presented the thoughtful cards created by our students.

Netball World Cup and Netball Super Cup – What an opportunity we had last Friday. Our captains took the responsibility of carrying this year‘s Super Netball Trophy around to all of the classes during the day. This was topped by the delivery of the Netball World Cup, won by the Australian Diamonds last year in South Africa. Former FWPS parents, Libby and Brad Howe brought in the Netball World Cup in time for assembly. Unfortunately, our assembly was held indoors for the first time this year, so for most of the students they were only able to view it via our broadcast to classrooms. Libby offered to stay afterwards, so all who chose to take a moment had a wonderful close-up opportunity. 

Coming Up...

Hoodie up for Autism -  Our Junior School Council has been promoting our annual HUFA day at Footscray West, held a little later this year due to prior commitments.  Children are welcome to come in casual dress, sporting a hoodie tomorrow.  Volunteers are encouraged to bring along a gold coin donation to support the AMAZE Foundation www.amaze.org.au

IDAHOBIT Day www.idahobit.org.au . We will encourage our students to dress up their casual dress with a rainbow of colours.  We’re thinking of ribbons, bands, bracelets, scarves or hats.  Both acknowledgements underlining our school values of Respect and Belonging.

Final Prep 2025 Information Session - Our final Prep 2025 information session will be held from 9:30am next, Tuesday 22nd May.  Bookings can be made at: 

https://compasstix.com/e/t4uvkuv39j

For current families we understand that the session may have limited value, but if you have a Prep starter in 2025 we urge you to collect an enrolment form now.  If you have any questions please contact the office on 03 9687 1535.

News… 

Education Week - It’s being celebrated this week in Victorian schools, however we made the decision to hold it back. We will have a Junior School Council focus STEAM Club happening during week 8 as well as a Maths 24 tournament.  Students will learn more about FWPS’ Education Week activities from the JSC reps during assembly in weeks 6 and 7.

Attitudes to School Survey - As noted in last week’s newsletter, the survey for students in grades 4, 5 and 6 (at primary level) is held at this time annually.  Our program has started this week and will be presented to each class by a member of the leadership team, along with the class teacher.

Student Reporting - Teaching teams had the opportunity to work from home on assessment and student reporting tasks on Monday. This was an ideal opportunity to utilise a professional practice day for a very relevant purpose. Our parent teacher learning conferences and student led conferences (for grade 5 and 6) will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday during Week 11, the final week of this term.

Berry Street Education Model at FWPS - there have been multiple newsletter references relating to our staged adoption of the BSEM since the decision to transition from our Tribes approach was settled on last year following the School review. Following the initial professional learning early this year, teaching teams have focused on developing the Morning Circle – this comprises the grades roll call, (often done in an engaging and inclusive manner), ready to learn scale, itinerary of the day and general housekeeping.  Grades may have a daily or regular acknowledgement of country and a positive primer, an inclusive activity to switch on brains and stimulate learning. Grades do this in an energetic and positive manner, enabling classes to be prepared for a terrific transition to the day's learning program. I have been attending representative grades from prep to 6 over the last two weeks and following this beneficial experience I will continue to visit all classrooms to observe this practice.

FWPS’ Vision and Values Design Competition - you will have seen the post last week seeking to promote our new values of belonging, respect, resilience and responsibility. We already have had some wonderful submissions and we welcome many more. Please send submissions to the office. We will make a display in the office of copies of submissions already made. Remember there will be a family prize or prizes for the selected value icons.  The due date is Friday, 31st of May.

Camps, Sports and Excursions Costs… are so much higher than prior to the pandemic. It is unfortunately a fact of life that following that difficult period when schools were unable to provide these types of loved opportunities, due to the increased costs of compliance, fuel and external staffing, events have become markedly more expensive.  Schools must manage such extra-curricular events on a ‘user pays basis’ as we do not (with the exception of swimming) receive subsidies to administer them.  With the generosity of our community, through the ‘One in, All in’ program and encouragement for all eligible families to access Camps, Sports and Excursion Fund, there is a cost reduction for some.  Nevertheless, many of our families are having to pay the increased costs without reduction.  We hope our community understands that the leadership and office teams work assiduously to plan events in a way that are cost effective, compliant and with an emphasis on safety.

Cheers,

Brendan

Repeated (and Updated) Messages…