The Bimbadeen Blaze

Principal's Report 

We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work, learn and play. We pay respect to Wurundjeri elders past, present and emerging and extend our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and families of Bimbadeen Heights Primary School.

Harmony Day Celebrations

Last week, students and staff at Bimbadeen participated in classroom activities and discussions to help celebrate, share, and embrace cultural diversity, as part of Harmony Day. Harmony Day is the celebration that recognises our diversity and brings together Australians from all different backgrounds. It’s about inclusiveness, respect, and a sense of belonging for everyone.​ Our students wore a touch of orange or dressed in culturally significant dress on Friday to help celebrate Harmony Day, and many students brought along items of cultural significance that they shared with their peers during classroom celebrations. It is always wonderful to recognise and celebrate the diversity of our community.

Easter Raffle

Thank you to the members of our community who donated items to our raffle and purchased raffle tickets and thank you to the Year 4 Teaching Team for coordinating the Easter Raffle this year. 

 

We had a whopping 60 prizes up for grabs, with many happy students and community members who won a prize. 

 

A special thankyou to the Thomas family who donated the first prize, a giant bunny from The Ministry of Chocolate! Congratulations to this year’s winners.

Whole School Cross Country

On Monday, we held our annual Whole School Cross Country event within and around the school grounds. There was a buzz of excitement throughout the school about our first major house competition for the year. Teachers and students alike enjoyed this exciting event on our sporting calendar. Parents and carers volunteers assisted with supervising at various points on the circuit and helped to cheer on our students. 

We all enjoyed the opportunity for our school community to come together for this special event. 

Congratulations to Brice house who were the winning house on the day with a total score of 377 points, closely followed by Blair on 364 points, Fletcher on 324 and Lithgow on 283. Well done to all our students who put in their best effort and demonstrated our school values of resilience during the run, as well as compassion as they encouraged and supported their peers and fellow house members throughout the competition.

 

A special thank you to Mr Joshua Gray, Ms Sam Tallentyre and Ms Melinda Ruscitti who did a wonderful job in organising the event, and our staff and wonderful parent and carer volunteers who assisted on the day.

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS)

SWPBS is a framework we implement across the school to support our student wellbeing and engagement. The SWPBS Parent Handbook, included in this week’s newsletter, provides you with more detail regarding our school values, what they mean, how we teach them and most importantly how students demonstrate the values and earn tokens in the different areas around our school. 

 

We appreciate the support and you talking to your child/ren about the values and how they are going earning them. SWPBS is not just for the students, it is for our staff and whole school community! If you even want to know more about SWPBS, please see your classroom teacher, Marty (Inclusion Leader and SWPBS Leader), Adele, Sabrina, or any staff member around our school. We also have our SWPBS display in our office with our value cylinders so please come and check it out!

Please look out for our special announcement about our application for a 2023 SWPBS Gold Award in this week’s newsletter!

CCTV At Our School

Bimbadeen Heights PS has a closed-circuit television (CCTV) system in operation at our school. Our school has an obligation to ensure the school environment is safe and secure, and fulfil our duty of care to students, staff, and visitors. The CCTV system assists our school to fulfil these obligations and prevent and manage other inappropriate behaviour on school grounds. CCTV also provides enhanced capability to protect our school’s assets against vandalism and theft.

 

We follow Department of Education and Training policy requirements for the design, installation, management, and use of the CCTV systems. This policy is available at: CCTV in Schools – Installation and Management. We will also have a CCTV Privacy Notice on our school website with more information about our school’s use. If you have any questions or concerns at this stage, please contact Adele Gregson or Sabrina George on 9726 9989.

School Council Update

School Council would like to express their sincere thanks for the voluntary parent contributions made by our parents and carers. Without the generous contributions of our families, we would not be able to provide the same high-quality programs, resources, and experiences for our students.

 

The first meeting of the new School Council was held on Wednesday evening this week. The meeting included the election of office bearers, and the following members were duly elected to specific roles on our council: 

  • President – Cyndi Grant
  • Vice President – Tristan Aumann
  • Treasurer – Andrew Lanigan 
  • Minutes Secretary – Bree King.

 

The membership of your School Council this year is as follows:

 

Parent Members

  • Cyndi Grant (Until March 2025)
  • Jamarl Scase (Until March 2025)
  • Tristan Aumann (Until March 2025)
  • Andrew Curnow (Until March 2025)
  • Andrew Lanigan (Until March 2026)
  • Kate Rogers (Until March 2026)
  • Morgan Gardiner (Until March 2026)
  • Emma Dickman (Until March 2026)
  • Kelly Dwyer (Until March 2026)

School Employee Members

  • Adele Gregson (Executive Officer)
  • Sabrina George (Until March 2026)
  • Alec Baroni (Until March 2024)
  • Bree King (Until March 2025)
  • Lizzie Henderson (Until March 2025)

Community Member

  • Vacant (until March 2026)

 

We were pleased with the interest from our parent/carer community in nominating for council. We are also very pleased calibre of the people on our School Council who are all great supporters of our school, and we look forward to working with them as we continue our journey with a focus on improving student learning outcomes.

School Council Sub-committees

Our School Council sub-committees provide an excellent opportunity for our parents/carers to contribute to our school community. Members of our community, including parents/carers, do not need to be on School Council to be a member of a sub-committee, and we warmly invited you to consider joining one or more committees to help lead the work of our council this year. 

 

In 2024, we have five sub-committees of School Council:

  • Finance – oversee and monitor the school’s finances and budgets.
  • Community Engagement – help raise funds to support the school’s annual goals and key projects and coordinates whole school and community events and celebrations.
  • Buildings and Grounds – focus on school maintenance and improvement to buildings and grounds.
  • Student Learning – develop school policies, contribute to the school’s curriculum plans, and help prepare for our next school review (to be held in 2026).
  • Student Wellbeing – support the school’s work around student wellbeing, and our wellbeing programs of Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships and School Wide Positive Behaviour Support.

 

Each sub-committee meets once a month (approximately 6-8 times per year), in the week prior to each School Council meeting. Meetings are usually held in the early evening and to ensure accessibility and inclusion, all sub-committee meetings include a Webex option for members of our school community to attend meetings virtually, when they are unable to attend in person. 

 

If you are interested in joining one or more of our sub-committees for this year, please contact the relevant convenor via phone or email:

Attendance matters

In accordance with the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 (Vic), schooling is compulsory for children and young people aged from 6 to 17 years unless an exemption has been granted. Parents/carers must enrol a child of compulsory school age at a registered school and always ensure the child attends school when the school is open for instruction. 

Students are expected to attend the school in which they are enrolled, during normal school hours every day of each term, unless there is an approved exemption from school attendance, or the student is registered for home-schooling and has only a partial enrolment in a school for activities. 

Schools must advise parents/carers of unexplained absences, on the same day, as soon as practicable. We use Sentral attendance to record this at Bimbadeen Heights Primary School.

ANZAC Service

Our annual ANZAC service will be held on Wednesday 24 April, the first day of next term, at 2:30pm. The service will be held on the netball court in front of our Gallipoli mural, weather permitting. We love to have parents/carers and other visitors attend the ceremony. On this day each year, many children also like to bring along medals or photos of relatives who have been service people. Teachers will give their students the opportunity to show these cherished items to classmates and talk about their significance. It is always pleasing to see how Bimbadeen students show great respect and honour the past in this way each year by participating in our school and other local ANZAC services. Keep a look out for more information about our ANZAC Ceremony in our next newsletter and via Sentral.

Choosing a School for Next Year / 2025 Foundation Enrolments

At this time of the year many people are thinking about choosing a school for next year. This may be parents of children in Year 6 who are deciding on secondary schools or parents of pre-schoolers who are looking for a primary school. 

 

Choosing the school that is best suited to your family and child’s needs can still be a challenge. The best way to determine the right school for you is to visit them, participate in the school tours and take advantage of the open days/nights and various transition events that the schools offer. 

This approach works equally well for primary and secondary schools.

 

From the first day of Term 2, we will be accepting enrolments for Foundation in 2025. We encourage prospective parents and carers to complete an online tour via the school website where you can learn about our wonderful school and meet our staff and students. Prospective families can also attend an in-person tour where we can show you our school and answer any questions you might have or discuss your child’s individual needs.

 

Mrs Gregson, Mrs George and Mr Gill have been busily providing personalised school tours for interested families, looking to enrol their child at Bimbadeen in 2025. Prospective families can book a school tour through the office on 9726 9989 or via email to Bimbadeen.heights.ps@education.vic.gov.au 

With a new state-wide enrolment timeline this year, we will be accepting enrolments for Foundation for 2025, and any other year level, from the beginning of next term. Further information about choosing a school and enrolling your child is available at https://www.vic.gov.au/how-choose-school-and-enrol Enrolment information will be available at the office from Term 2.

 

If you know of anyone who is looking at a Primary School for next year, please encourage them to visit our website and register for the online tour where they will hear teachers, parents and students talk about our school. They are also encouraged to come and visit Bimbadeen and see our school ‘in action’ where they will get a sense of the great relationships that exist here. We love showing people around and talking about this outstanding school.

Child Safe Standards

Our School Council Student Learning Sub-Committee regularly review and update our school policies that fall under the umbrella of the Child Safe Standards. In 2024, we will be discussing and reviewing the Child Safe Standards at each meeting, with the aim to continue to improve how we address each standard and improve the structures and processes we have in place to help keep our students safe from harm.

 

Over the coming Term, we will be sharing an overview of each of the Child Safe Standards in the newsletter to help build community awareness of the standards and to seek feedback around how the standards are addressed at Bimbadeen. 

 

A vital component of reviewing and updating school policies is parent/carer involvement and feedback. Whilst there are several avenues for this, the most effective way is to attend a Student Learning Sub-Committee meeting. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday 13 May at 5pm, in the staffroom at school. If you would like to join the Student Learning Subcommittee or attend our next meeting, please contact Alec Baroni on 9726 9989 or Alec.Baroni@education.vic.gov.au   

 

Future Student Learning Subcommittee meetings for this year are:

  • Monday 17 June 2024
  • Monday 12 August 2024
  • Monday 9 September 2024
  • Monday 11 November 2024.

 

If you have any concerns about Child Safety, please speak with a member of our school leadership team. 

 

We hope you enjoy a lovely break over the school holidays, and we look forward to welcoming you all back for the beginning of another fantastic term of learning at Bimbadeen.

 

Kind regards, 

Adele Gregson and Sabrina George