Welcome to the end of term 1!

We have had a very long term one this year, most years term one is usually about 9 weeks but this year it’s 11 weeks, so as you can imagine both kids and staff are running out of energy right about now! (probably about two weeks ago actually)

It’s been a great term where staff and students have worked together to achieve some great things, including our recent Harmony Day celebrations, camps and excursions. There are many examples of student achievement at PLSC, but the most important things is the way that staff and students treat one and another everyday. There is a real culture building of mutual respect and care for others.

It is a pleasure to come to work every day, the staff and students are our greatest asset at PLSC and we are very proud of what they have achieved together so far in 2023.

Rewarding good behaviors

This year our focus has been on improving our attendance. To support this, we have introduced the AAA awards (Triple A).

This stands for:

Attitude
Attendance
Achievement

We present tasty truck vouchers weekly and larger prizes at the end of the term for those students who attend regularly, do their work and do their best at all times.

School Council elections

I have published the results of our school council nomination process and we will welcome Melissa Whiteside to School Council. We will also have Kylie Bourchier returning as a parent representative.

School Council Executive Committee:

Colleen Montleone - President

Judy Carter - Vice President

Karen Robinson - Treasurer

I will publish all of the information to the school community re the election on compass. We thank our two parent nominees in advance for their service in 2023/24.

Annual report

The annual report will be made available to the school community in Term 2. Many of the data sets relate to programs we don’t run, that is years 7-9 Naplan and the traditional VCE. Not surprisingly it looks like we are doing quite poorly in those things as it’s not who we are or what we do. The issue is the department has a one size fits all approach to this and I have tried to focus on what we will be doing for our students going forward and the gains we have made over the last 6 months or so, some of which cannot necessarily be represented in data sets.

Staffing and student numbers in 2023

Our aim this year was to remain above 100 students as we have dropped our year 9 cohort and our budgets are based on 117 students in 2023 – we are on track to go past that and we are still enrolling students as I am writing this.

School Council have approved two Curriculum Days - pupil free, to assist PLSC staff with the move to our new site. These dates are:

Thursday 6th April
Monday 24th April

Staffing

Congratulations to

David Husk
Paul Meager

Both have been appointed as substantive Assistant Principals, a job well done. They will continue their great work!

Returning in 2023, term 2

Sarah Horner – Pathways

Departing in term 2

David Quarrell – Leading teacher – Head start Program

Building program

We are very hopeful of practical completion this week and I will let everybody know in the future when the formal opening will be. We anticipate starting our term 2 in the new building which they are putting the finishing touches to. I am still negotiating with the VSBA and the department to get a storage shed and a car park as well as adequate electronic signage for both Robert St and Duncan Rd. We are being well supported by the NWVR in this. Hopefully the finish line is in sight on this one.

It has been a long process that has spanned across 5 Principal’s and I wish to acknowledge all of the efforts of them all, without their work, and particularly Rod Sheehan’s, we would not be in such an exciting position. We also need to thank our school council for contributing $2.2 million to add to state governments $8.2 Million. We will now eagerly await the announcement of stage 2 in the upcoming state budget in May 2023. It will be a great thing for this years Yr12s to finish in a new building and future students to have contemporary facilities to go with high quality teaching done by our staff at PLSC everyday .

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