Principal's Report 

Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you to the parents and carers who attended the “Getting to Know Your Child” Parent/Teacher Interviews earlier this week. It was a great opportunity for you to let us know about your child, their needs, interests, and your hopes. I know the teachers find when the communication channels between teachers and parents are open and clear they get better results with the children. I’d also like to thank the teachers for the time they put in to attend, as it does impact their own families and work/life balance.

School Values: I thought it as timely to share our School Values with our community. These are relevant to all our community – students, staff, families and visitors.

Hot weather arrangements: As you may be aware we cancelled assembly today due to the predicted high temperature. We also enact a Hot Weather Day policy where the children stay inside when the temperature reaches 35 degrees, much like a wet weather timetable. The staff also encourage the children to drink lots of water on these extreme weather days and encourage them to stay in the shaded areas. We understand that you may be concerned for your child during these extreme weather events however wanted to reassure you that because the classrooms have air conditioning and we enact the policy to stay inside when it gets very hot, we encourage you to send your child to school if they are otherwise well.

Swimming: If your child is in Year Prep, Year 1 or Year 2 they should have brought home a note this week about swimming which will start on Monday 6th March. Please note we do have limited space, however feel confident that we will be able to fit most, if not all students who want to go. To help with the organising of this we request you return the form as soon as possible. Please note the cut off date to return the form is Monday 27th February 2023. 

Camps: We are pleased to be able to offer camps for our Year 3/4s and Year 5/6s early Term 3 this year. Notes will be sent home soon giving families the opportunity to start paying off the cost over a long period. All payments will need to be finalised by the end of Term 2. Please look out for information about these upcoming events.

Annual privacy reminder for our school community: Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy. Please take time to read our school’s collection notice, found on our website Privacy_Collection_Notice (meltonwestps.vic.edu.au) We ask parents to also review the guidance we provide on how we use Google Suite googlesuite-parent-info.docxsafely at the school and what parents can do to further protect their child’s information. If after reviewing the guidance, you have any questions or concerns regarding your child using Google Suite, please contact the school. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents Schools' privacy policy (education.vic.gov.au). This information is also available in ten community languages including Dari, Sudanese, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

High Levels of Learning for All

Michelle Costa

Principal