Principal's Report

Term 2 Begins

Welcome Back to everyone and we hope you had an enjoyable break. It’s nice to have some sunny days to kick start this term, after some cool weather in the second week of the break.

We had a great assembly to finish last term, with some terrific presentations from the kids. These included:

· The band had their first performance for the year and did an excellent job.

· A delegation of grade 3s did a fabulous job explaining their experience at camp.

· We had an update from the EBT Team.

· The grade 6 sporting house leaders presented a range of awards related to the 3-6 athletics carnival, whilst a delegation of students competing at the Division Athletics event outlined their experience.

· Our Scotsburn leaders presented a video outlining the features of Scotsburn across term 1.

· Mr Muldoon and the school captains ran a game which our grade 6s learnt from the GRIP Leadership Conference in Melbourne.

Overall, it was a really nice way to kick off the last day of term, celebrating the achievements of our students and showcasing the capacity of our kids to present so well in front of a large crowd…not sure I could have done that at their age!

Welcome Back to Mrs Sullivan and Mrs Arts

We welcome Narelle back into the Assistant Principal (Wellbeing) role after some time on leave last term and thank Jarrod Rodgers and Will Georgiou for stepping up and looking after the wellbeing side of things during this period. We also welcome Helen Arts back after extended leave and know her cooking groups will be excited to have her back.

What’s To Expect in Term 2

The term 1 calendar was action packed, and we have quite a bit happening in the first few weeks of this term, before things settle down.

Events on the calendar for this term include:

Inter-school bowls, inter-house cross country & a chess tournament this week
School Photos, a Book Fair and Japan Day next week
A Mother’s Day Stall & Breakfast in week 3
Celebrating Education Week from May 18-22 (Theme of ‘Showcase Your School’)
A pupil free day on June 5 for report writing
A 6 week ‘Tuning Into Kids’ parenting program on Thursdays throughout May and June
The usual array of Inter-school sports for term 2 (AFL, lawn bowls, soccer, cross country & netball).
Year 4 Camp on June 9 & 10
A Sausage Sizzle in week 9
Parent Teacher Interviews in the final week
A ‘pyjama’ theme dress up day to finish off the term.

Facilities Update

It was quieter than normal in terms of facilities projects for this break. The jobs we did tackle included:

New Soccer Barriers - New barriers have been installed behind the soccer goals on the west side of the oval. These should stop most of the wayward shots at goal and prevent balls banging into or sailing over the boundary fence. This will be much more pleasant for our neighbours.
Test and Tagging - We had a team in checking all appliances across the school are safe and comply with Australian standards.
Servicing of Gas Heaters - All of our gas heaters were serviced, which we’re required to do annually.

Congratulations to Jarrod Rodgers

Jarrod has been successful in picking up the Assistant Principal role at Mt Pleasant PS. This is well deserved and we know Jarrod will do an excellent job in the role. Jarrod will take up that position in a few weeks time and a selection process has started to find a replacement.

Continued Industrial Action

Unfortunately, agreement on a new deal for school staff has not been reached and the AEU has announced a range of industrial action measures to be enacted this term.

One of those is half day rolling stop work actions across the state. For the Ballarat area, that will be the morning of May 21.

If there is no deal reached in the meantime, it’s likely we will have a number of classes not running on that day. As with the previous stop work, we won’t know the details until 48 hours before the action and will communicate arrangements to parents at the earliest opportunity.