From the Assistant Principal

Koorie Tea:

Our next Koorie Morning Tea will be held Friday, 28 November from 9.15-10.15am next to our Breakfast Club area. We will be following up actions suggested from our last meeting and discussing next steps on our journey to develop a “safe space” for our Koorie students to enable connection and support a sense of belonging here at South Melbourne Park.

School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS):

We have completed consultation with our Student Representative Council (SRC) on our school-wide behaviour matrix.  This document outlines how we want to see our school values of Be Kind, Be Responsible and Be an Active Learner displayed and used across our school, both in our classrooms and when we play at play times. 

This week the matrix will be discussed at our Wellbeing Subcommittee this Thursday evening to gain parent/carer insights and reflections.   We aim to have the final version ready to share in our last newsletter of the year. 

Additionally, we have been working on professional learning and documentation of how we, as a school staff, both encourage appropriate behaviours and discourage inappropriate behaviours.  As you can imagine, this is a complex process where we not only identify behaviours and define them, but deliver professional learning in how we respond to these behaviours in a consistent, supportive and evidence-based manner.  The continued work in this area will likely shape our Wellbeing actions for our 2026 Annual Implementation Plan.  Should you wish to be involved in consultation with parents on our documentation as we continue our roll out of SWPBS, please consider joining our Wellbeing Subcommittee by emailing our school email address and request: Join Wellbeing Subcommittee in the subject line.

Smile Squad:

From Monday, 17 November through Friday, 5 December we are hosting Smile Squad and their dental van.  Smile Squad are a free Dental Health service where your child can receive a dental health check-up on-site at school during school hours. We currently have over 40% of our students signed up for this service and are pleased to be able to facilitate this for our families. 

Inform and Empower:

A massive shout out to our School Council President, Katrina Walker, for securing us another grant through our local Community Bank in Windsor to implement the cyber safety sessions once again from Inform and Empower in 2026.  These sessions have been instrumental in bringing the latest awareness for our students, teachers and families about how to create awareness and safety when engaging with technology.  From the suggestions of how to put parameters in place at home, to how to stay safe online, to the dangers being experienced in games, such as Roblox, this learning provides us with opportunities to keep kids safe.  We are looking forward to the updated learning next year’s content will bring us.

Process to Induct External Allied Health:

This year I have written a total of 45 licensing agreements for external Allied Health to be able to support students to have sessions at school in speech, psychology, occupational therapy or physiotherapy.  While this process has been quite the undertaking, we now have a clear system in place which allow our external providers to be better known to us and allow us to build better relationships to work together to support students. 

Raising Children Network:

Raising Children Network (https://raisingchildren.net.au/school-age/behaviour) has a great website for families supporting their understanding of children from school-aged to pre-teens and beyond in areas, such as communication, behaviour, etc., as well as videos to help support development and parenting. 

E-Safety Parenting Information Sessions:

Two upcoming sessions are available to support parents with the upcoming social media bans coming into effect in December through City of Port Phillip: Digital Parenting: Regulate and Respond and Navigating the Social Media Delay.

Happy November!

Sam Smrekar Thompson

Assistant Principal