DEPUTY PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

We are very lucky to live in a safe and secure community; however, from time to time we are reminded that we need to ensure that we are being responsible for our resources. Over the long weekend there were unknown persons on our school property. Whilst nothing was permanently damaged, the intruders went through lockers and made quite a mess. I spoke to the students on Wednesday morning and while it was clearly not their fault that some other people decided to trespass and interfere with school property, much of the disturbance would have been reduced had our students locked their lockers. Each student is provided with a locker and a lock and are regularly encouraged to use these properly. Unfortunately many of our students have gotten into the habit of leaving their lockers unlocked. Whilst this might be manageable during the school day, it is an expectation that students leave their lockers secured overnight. Lockers contain lots of replaceable items such as deodorant and drink bottles. They also contain expensive textbooks, calculators and quite regularly, MacBooks and phones. It would be a hard lesson to learn to have to replace a MacBook because a locker wasn’t locked and opportunistic people trespassed. In an ideal world there would be no need for anything to be locked, however we know that this is not reality. We lock our cars, our houses and our sheds and at school we lock our rooms, our offices and our lockers. Thankfully, this kind of incident does not happen very often but nevertheless it is a good reminder to our students not to be complacent. 

At ​St Mary MacKillop College we are committed to taking good care of our school’s resources to ensure that ​the environment is one that ​supports our students. This means keeping our ​buildings and classrooms in good shape, maintaining the grounds and using materials and resources wisely. Staff encourage students to keep the yard tidy, to look after sports equipment and learning materials and to ​be good stewards of our school resources. 

​By doing this, we create a healthy, sustainable school environment while teaching students about the importance of taking care of what we have. When we all work together to use resources responsibly, we’re building a stronger, more mindful school community for years to come.​ 

Catherine Howison

Deputy Principal