Principal's News

Thank you for taking a moment to engage in our newsletter for this fortnight. We have had a busy few weeks around the school and as we hit the 1st December, we can officially say, welcome to Summer! As always, please drop over to the office or come and speak to me if you have any clarifications from the information provided in this edition of our newsletter. 

School Fete

I am incredibly proud of our school community and so thankful to the weather gods! What a wonderful celebration our School Fete provided. I was so pleased to see everything came together and with the weather behaving on the day, the hard work undertaken by our fete committee in the lead up to the event was able to present such a fun day for our school. 

There are so many people to thank and tireless support offered by families throughout the course of the day, it was a whole of school achievement and one that couldn’t have occurred without the little and big pieces of support that was offered on the day. My sincere thanks to our major sponsors for the event – Realm, Team Kids, MRC Foundation, Vision Personal Training and to our amazing Fete Committee led by Deb (mother of Otis), Jemma (mother of Mae), Aden (Father of Ally), Christine (mother of Alicia and Sienna) and Jodie (mother of Marisa), they were incredibly well supported by families, parents, siblings and volunteers that made the day a wonderful success! Our thanks is extended to: 

• Carolyn - Sponsorship/Donations/Silent Auction/Lego
• Kyoko, Yoko, Yuka, Victoria, Simon - Publicity/Marketing/Website
• Michi, DJ James, Simon, Daphne and Sally - Entertainment, MC's, Music - DJs
• Yayoi, Kylie, Sam, Steve, Yuka - Food and Beverage
• Carissa, Nicole, Maya, Michael, Victoria, Libby, Grace, Susan, Helen - Stalls/Activities
• Close to 100 volunteers on the day including JSC, Students, parents/grandparents that loaned equipment and donated goods
• Our school staff including Warren for supporting the day

Next Steps

We committed to a very successful school fete with the ambition of raising money to complete an upgrade and replacement to our synthetic turf and I am pleased to share with you the steps that we have already undertaken to complete this work. We raised just over $34,000 on the day, an amazing result! School building or maintenance work that is priced above a $50,000 threshold must be endorsed by the Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA) and has a number of steps that must be undertaken. 

Step 1: Seek School Council Approval in approved motions - Complete

Step 2: Obtain 3 written quotes – Complete  

Step 3: Submit Minor Building Works Application with VSBA – Complete  

Fete Feedback

Our Fete Committee would really appreciate the opportunity to capture some of the feedback from our school community as a learning point, if you are able to spare 5 minutes to click on the Fete Feedback Link here this would greatly assist us. 

2024 Staff Listing

As we move towards the end of the 2023 school year, we continue to make plans to ensure optimal learning opportunities for our students in 2024. In 2024, we are introducing a new STEM program for all students for 1 hour per week and we have used Department of Education, Mental Health funding to recruit a speech pathologist to our school in a part-time capacity, our class structure will look as follows:

Farewell

I extend my sincere thanks to our departing staff members, Ms Aiyelokun, Mrs Jones, and Sakamoto sensei, for their commitment to our school and our students over the course of 2023 and in the case of Ms. Aiyelokun over many years. I wish Sakamoto sensei all the best on her overseas travel and to Ms Aiyelokun and Mrs Jones for their dedication to our students this year and in their 2024 plans.  

Our 2024 Team Members

We are excited about welcoming our new staff in 2024 to our school, we have taken some time over the last few months to recruit staff that will support our vision and direction for our school moving forward. They have taken a moment to introduce themselves below:

Tina Pyrcz

Hello everyone! My name is Tina Pyrcz and I am so excited to be joining Caulfield Primary School in 2024 as a Year 3/4 teacher. I graduated from Monash University in 2022 with a Bachelor of Primary Education and Arts and have since been working as a Casual Relief Teacher. In Term 3 this year, I was lucky enough to work at CPS for 6 weeks with the Year 5/6s. I am passionate about working with children and I cannot wait to work with the wonderful CPS students, staff and community.  

Georgie Labb

I am excited about joining CPS and providing the services of a private speech pathologist in 2024 to provide onsite support to enhance the learning outcomes of students with additional learning needs within the school. Georgie is a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist and a member of Speech Pathology Australia. Georgie has worked as a paediatric speech pathologist since 2008, providing assessment and intervention services in a variety of settings, including child-care centres, preschools, schools, specialist educational settings, the community and private practice.   

Yawen Deng

Greetings Caulfield Primary School families! I am thrilled to join the school community as your new teacher next year. Having dedicated six years to teaching and in leadership positions, I am excited to be working with a great team of teachers and wonderful students! I come from a Chinese background, and have an interest in learning other languages, such as Japanese and Korean! I would love to share all my stories with everyone when we finally meet! See you all soon! 

Political Activities and Activism

The ideology that schools are and should be apolitical is entrenched in the principles of providing a neutral and unbiased environment for education.  Consequently, objectivity and neutrality are paramount as education aims to provide students with the tools to think critically and make informed decisions. An apolitical stance helps educators present information in a neutral manner, allowing our students to form their own opinions rather than being influenced by a particular political agenda.

Political discussions can be divisive and controversial with schools required to avoid becoming a battleground for political conflicts, focusing instead on providing a space for learning and intellectual growth and an environment that is conducive to treating everyone with consideration and respect. I am aware of a proposal circulated to a small number of schools calling for a Teachers’ Week of Action in relation to current events in the Middle East. In no way is this action endorsed or supported by the Department of Education. We will continue to promote the role of our school and school staff to support students’ health and wellbeing where students are concerned or distressed, as well as to support and enable students to consider and think critically about a range of perspectives on complex issues.  You are always welcome to come and speak to me if you wish to discuss this further.

Year 1/2 Sleepover

It was great to join our Year ½ Team last Thursday to celebrate our Year ½ sleepover, I was really proud of our Year 1 and 2 students who participated in this evening and in particular to our Year 2 students who slept overnight at the school. Having the opportunity to see our students demonstrate their growing independence was a real highlight with many students partaking in the evening demonstrative of our school values in particular kindness, respect and responsibility. I also extend my sincere appreciation to our Year ½ teaching team who slept overnight at school to make this event possible, I can share firsthand, that sleeping in school corridors is not overly pleasant but it was a great event for our students that couldn’t have occurred without the support of our ½ Team and our volunteer staff members. Many schools have discontinued these sleepover events over recent years, I am really thankful to our staff that have allowed us to offer this opportunity to our students this year. 

AARE Conference

It was a great honour to work alongside Nicola Sum (Monash University), Reshmi Lahiri-Roy (Federation University) and Helen Koziaris (Principal – South Oakleigh SC) to present our research work on leadership learning from crises. We began this work together in 2020. Held at the University of Melbourne the educational research conference also allowed me to engage and learn from some quality presentations from Professor David Gurr on Principal leadership, Jon Quach (Implementation of RTI for Oral Language and Literacy) and Christopher Hudson (Characteristics of effective school leadership). 

Parent Opinion Survey 

Early next week, I will share the outcomes from our Parent Opinion Survey, I have always considered our school to be a community, to that end our parents and families are such important elements of our school. Our results were very pleasing and a great reflection of the work of all staff. To make this data work for us, I would like to seek out any parents/families that would like to be a part of some small focus groups to help us identify some 2024 actions to ensure we continue to engage positively with our families, I will share this opportunity via schoolstream next week. 

Parent Payments

As shared in our previous newsletter, our 2024 parent payment requests were approved at our final school council meeting of the year, these will be distributed to families next week. 

Student Free Days – 2024

A few dates for your 2024 diary were endorsed by our school council last week, these include our 2024 Student Free Days which will be delivered on the following dates: 

• 29th January – Statewide Planning Day
• 26th June – Parent Teacher Interviews
• 4th December – Teacher Professional Learning with Bronwyn Ryrie Jones
• 9th December – 2025 Teaching Teams planning 

Principal for a Day

Having made it to December, I have enlisted some help to get me through the December rush, I am pleased to inform our school community that I will be job sharing alongside two worthy school leaders next week, Eloise M (Year ¾) and Lillian E (Year ½) were both appointed Principal For A Day from our Silent Auctions that occurred at our CPS Fete and our CPS Trivia Night, Eloise will take the reigns on Monday 4th December with Lillian taking charge on Wednesday 6th December, I look forward to working alongside Eloise and Lillian as they put their stamp on the school. 

School Council

Thank you to our school council members who met for the final time this year, Morioka sensei, Miss Ryan and I have greatly enjoyed the support of our school council members and their approach to ensuring our students are enjoying a high-quality education. In particular, I extend my sincere thanks to Chris S (Father of Emily – Year 6) for his longstanding commitment to our school council and his role as Treasurer. Thank you Chris!  

Student Free Day

A reminder that we are hosting our final student free day on Monday 11th December, our 2024 teaching teams will be working together to begin planning for Term 1 next year. Bookings with Camp Australia can be made for a service in lieu of our ordinary Monday program.

2024 Classes

Miss Ryan and Onda sensei have worked over a number of weeks on creating our 2024 class structure. We utilise a class builder program that adopts an algorithm to create classes comprising balance in gender, ages, academic ability, behaviours, and individual student needs, we then also add in the student friendship requests and any other additional information. It becomes a complex task and we have finalised our classes with thanks to their leadership. Students will find out their 2024 class on our Meet the Teacher day. 

I am sure your household and workplace is as busy as ours is as we gear up for the final weeks of the school year, we have a host of activities to come and I am excited about joining our graduating class of 2024 on the 12th December and our upcoming bush dance and end of year performances. There is a great buzz about our school and I look forward to seeing you around over coming weeks and saying hi, have a great weekend! 

Thanks,

Edward Strain 

Principal