Principal's Item 

Dear parents, carers and friends of EEPS,

I hope that everyone had a break over the holidays and made some memories over Easter. I would like to welcome the new families who have started at EEPS this week, may your time with us be enjoyable and memorable. We are set for another busy term.

Holiday Works

Over the holiday break we completed some internal painting as well as refurbishing the walkway leading to the BER building. Thank you to Garry Wynne for coordinating these tasks. We also took advantage of the opportunity to complete many small maintenance jobs.

Oval Tackling

Every year, as the football season takes off, students need reminders around the rules of footy at school. At the end of last term, a group of keen Year 3 and 4 football players had a meeting with Mrs Joseph and Mr O’Dwyer to remind them about EEPS rules for school football. Please have a follow-up discussion at home, especially if your child is a keen footballer to remember that there is no tackling at school. Thank you.

Behaviour Response Process

Over the next week we are launching EEPS updated Behaviour Response Process. This refreshed update has had a lot of thinking and workshopping put into it. The process was approved by School Council last term, as part of our Wellbeing policy. It will be on our website shortly. We have developed a ‘Playbook’ for our staff, as well as conducted several professional learning sessions with our teachers.  It will be a great adjunct to our existing wellbeing processes and will be used with students when things happen from time to time. Please also look out for our social media posts about this new process.

Industrial Action

It was my sincere hope that the government would have reached an agreement with the Australian Education Union on a new industrial agreement for the teaching workforce. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and there are a series of additional industrial actions that have been advocated by the union this term. Some of these won’t have a direct impact on the classrooms, or the students, whilst others may. I will keep you up to date with developments in this space. As with every other issue in life there will be differing opinions on this topic, but we will continue to respect these differences. 

Kindness is the Goal

Whilst there are a vast number of positive things happening in the school and a very high percentage of students who consistently do their very best to live by the values of the school there has been a small number of students who have been making mean and targeted comments to others. I have communicated directly to Year 5 and 6 parents, but for everyone else please know that Eltham East Primary School is way more than a place of academic learning in key curriculum areas - it is a place where young people learn to become capable, thoughtful, respectful and kind humans. I would ask that all parents place high importance upon this.

Coming up:

Thursday 23rd April, 3:45-4:45pm - Stand-Up Project Family Evening

Friday 24th April, 9:00 am in the Hall - Anzac Day Service

Monday 27th April – Assembly

We are off to a great start. Have a great week of Learning and Growing Together.

Kind regards

Warren Lloyd

Principal