Acting Principal's Report

Welcome back to students and families to an exciting and very busy Term 2!  We have absolutely hit the ground running with our perseverance in learning and friendly attitude towards each other.  It's always amazing to visit our classrooms and see our students in action.  By mid morning on day one, you never would have guessed that our students had just come back from 2 weeks break.  I sincerely hope that all of you had a happy and restful time if you were lucky enough to grab a break for yourselves.  Andrew is having an incredible time in the USA with his family, enjoying places the rest of us have only seen in the movies (Disneyland, Broadway, Vegas, etc).

School Running Track and Accessible Building Works

You may have noticed a very busy playground on your return, with our accessible building work and running track both in full swing.  Things look a little messy now but in a few short weeks we will have an incredible new running track that runs the expanse of our oval.  A new cricket pitch assessable parking, ramps that make our buildings more accessible and automatic doors in our main traffic areas, which let's face it makes life a whole lot easier for all of us. We are incredibly fortunate to have such good work going on in the school.  Ultimately having a great sporting space and buildings that make accessibility more equitable for all is so advantageous to our students at all stages of their schooling lives.  Mr Pitinga and Mrs Uzunbay are especially excited to be back in their classrooms with a brand new ramp as well!  Talk about a new lease on life for both of those classes! I thank all of our families for being very understanding of this shared use of space at this time.

Our car park needs to remain primarily for staffing, those with impaired mobility and trades people during this time for the safety of our whole community.  Parking for families can be found at the church and in our very nearby side streets.  Kiss and Drop is still operational and I thank all parents who are observing the rule of not letting your child out of the car until they reach the Kiss and Drop Zone (near the tennis courts). Thanks for your co-operation!

You will have noticed that we have a new accessible parking area at the front of the school.  This is strictly for people that have ADP permits.

Open Night

Coming up on Wednesday May 15th we have our annual Open Night for school families and prospective families.  The night is ALWAYS an incredible experience for students and we hope to see all of our families in attendance.  Classrooms will be open with our teachers offering lots of games, fun and educational experiences and of course our raffle prizes at the conclusion of the evening.  The evening for our current families begins at 5.30pm in the school gym.  New families or prospective families are welcome to join us a bit earlier at 4.30pm in the Multi Purpose Room where a Foundation Information Session and performance by our stellar Symphonic Band will take place.

Our families are also invited to come along to our Open band rehearsals from 7.50am during week 5 and open classrooms during week 6.  Please keep your eye on COMPASS for more information soon.

ANZAC Day and Curriculum Day 2024

This week is a short week at BPS with ANZAC Day on Thursday 25th April and a Whole School Curriculum Day on Friday 26th April.  These are both student free days at BPS and classes will not take place.  Their Care will be running on Friday for those families that require child care on that day.

We commemorated ANZAC Day at our assembly last week on Friday 19th April in a respectful ceremony written and spoken beautifully by our Grade 6 School Captains, Ollie, Leroy, Aadya and Alice.  The Last Post and Rouse was performed in style by Amy C in Grade 5 and a number of students added to our ceremonial assembly by laying rosemary at our commemorative photo-board of our ex-BPS war time ANZACS.

Blackburn Primary School were also invited to participate in the Whitehorse Schools ANZAC Service this week in Box Hill, where our school captains presented a wreath and our whole Grade 6 captaincy group attended with some of our teachers.  Again, I can't speak more highly of our students and their exemplary behaviour during this service.  I can't stress more strongly that wherever we go, we are commended by the way in which our students conduct themselves, the way they treat others and how respectful they are.  This is the good work of our community but also (and especially) of our teaching staff who have high expectations of our students.

Thursday Big Band

We were very fortunate this week to have a visit and performance from the Thursday Big Band from Blackburn High School. They are preparing to attend the ‘Generations in Jazz Festival’ in Mount Gambier, South Australia along with six other bands from their school. Our students were pretty blown away by how polished their sound was but THEY were very pretty impressed by our very own grade 5 student Amy Chua who wowed absolutely everybody with her performance of The Last Post and Rouse.  It's not an easy piece to play but she absolutely nailed it and I couldn't be more proud.  I have to say, our high school friends and their teachers were pretty impressed by the respect, behaviour and responsibility demonstrated by all of our students throughout this assembly.  Well done team BPS!

Special Visit

It’s all been happening at BPS this week with our Grade 5 and 6 students treated to a visit from ex-NBL player Adam Ballinger who now runs community clinics with Melbourne United.  How incredible for our students to take part in a basketball clinic from one of the greats! The clinic was provided by Melbourne United NBL team as part of their Teacher Ambassador program which encourages teachers to help promote the sport of basketball in our schools.  A big thank you to Tanya Stansfield who helped run this event.

School Readiness

We continue to celebrate our pre-Foundation readiness program with lots of fun activities planned for 3-4 year old children who attend our local kinder and child care.  If you are a family looking to take part in these activities please ring our school office to make a booking to attend one or all of the dates listed in the poster below!  If our current families know of friends who are wanting to take part please do pass on our details.  The more the merrier!

Well that's it from me this week!  Remember to check out the rest of our newsletter for information on what your child will be learning in each level, key dates and our new school council team! 

Marianne Fusillo