Hello everyone,

A very warm welcome to our new families and welcome back to our returning families! It has been so lovely to see you all and to hear about your summer, I have also appreciated the many families who have asked how my summer has been. It is just one of the many reasons our school community is so wonderful, we check in with each other.

A couple of highlights from my summer break- Reading lots of books and achieving a PB at parkrun- 33:03!

It is such a pleasure seeing the care our staff take in supporting our students to settle back in to school and to get to know their classmates. All our classrooms are calm and welcoming spaces, and our students are quickly learning, and remembering, our routines and expectations. Our new staff are also setting in to our school with plenty of support from their colleagues. We are all here to 'Be our best.'

2025 Staff.

We have a fabulous team of people at Violet St Primary. We are all excited to be working together and to be working closely with you to support your child/ren to achieve their best.

Over the next few weeks our senior students will be interviewing our staff for the newsletter, so you will get to know everyone. For now, here is our staffing for 2025-

Foundation= Rachel Quarrier.

1/2Jack= Jack Belsar.

1/2Skye= Skye Schueller.

2/3Bianca= Bianca Giampaolo.

3/4MB= David Morrison-Blunck.

4K= Di Kennedy and Kim Kirkpatrick (Kim is in the classroom on Fridays).

5/6Jackson= Jackson Godfrey.

5/6JC= Jacinta Condon and Cosima Perley (Cos is in the classroom on Thursdays).

5/6Kelsie= Kelsie Rowlands.

Business Manager= Lou Bray.

Learning Specialist and Maths intervention= Kim Kirkpatrick.

Literacy intervention= Lisa Fasham

Disability Inclusion/Mental Health in Primary Schools leader= Nicole Lowe.

Student wellbeing officer= Cate Burns.

Education Support staff= Louise Rodriquez, Julie Giudice, Lauren Hussey-Makepeace, Danni Ferrari, Danae Francis, Xiaolan Thornton.

EAL support= Soe Lay, (Tuesday mornings).

Art/Cooking= Sheridan Leversha.

PE= Laura Hicks.

Music= Bridget Finch.

Chinese (Mandarin)= Cecilia Liu.

Gardening program= Daniel Halliday.

Webster St safety.

We have a school crossing in Webster St. Our crossing is an' unstaffed' crossing', which means that there is not enough traffic using Webster st for council to appoint a school crossing supervisor. Department of Education rules state very clearly that schools are not to employ school crossing supervsiors, however, we put the flags out every day and a staff member is on duty there at the beginning and end of each school day.

We want everyone to be safe when arriving and departing from school. You can help by-

making sure you stick to the 40kmh speed limit around our school.
when the crossing flags are out, you must stop and let people cross who are waiting to cross.
only park in designated parking spaces.
only park in the accessible parking space if you have the appropriate permit and the person the permit applies to needs to enter and/or exit the vehicle.
no U turns near the crossing, or at the Webster St/Old Violet St intersection.
teach your child/ren how to use the school crossing safely.

We also have a staff member on duty after school at the Nettle St entrance. They will check it is safe for students to cross the road.

Student accident, personal and ambulance insurance.

Please note that the Department of Education does not provide personal accident insurance or ambulance cover for students.

*Parents/carers of students, who do not have student accident insurance, are responsible for paying the cost of medical treatment for injured students, including the cost of ambulance attendance or transport as well as any other transport costs; and

*Parents/carers can purchase insurance policies from commercial insurers.

The Department also does not hold insurance for personal property brought to schools and it has no capacity to pay for any loss or damage to such property.

Sunsmart.

As a Sunsmart school, our students receive regular reminders to apply sunscreen, we check the sunmart app with our grades, we provide sunscreen in our learning spaces and our uniform meets the sunsmart requirements. If your child is sensitive to some sunscreens you are most welcome to send along a suitable sunscreen clearly labelled with their name. When the weather is forecast to be very hot, we adjust our recess and lunch breaks so our students might be out for a shorter period of time, and then come inside where it is cooler, or they just stay inside enjoying the cool air!

Student free day Tuesday 11 March.

On Tuesday 11th March our staff will be participating in Protective Intervention Training. Please make note of this date as it is a student free day. Keep an eye on our OSHC page in the newsletter to find out if they will be offering OSHC for the day.

This week's newsletter is a short one, next week's newsletter will include more of our regular information including Parents & Friends OSHC and our students and teachers sharing what is happening in classrooms.

Thank you all for helping your children to be ready for 'back to school', we appreciate your support! The start of next week is forecast to be hot so remember to pack a refillable water bottle for your child.

Enjoy your weekend and stay cool!

warm regards,

Carolyn.

School banking details.

Westpac.

Bendigo Violet Street Primary

BSB: 033-688

Account number: 93-1292

Payment reference: use your surname and fees.

Some photos from our first three days.