Acting Principal's Update

Return to school

It has been a long time since the last update and newsletter. It has been a surreal time, with lockdown, then extension of lockdown, then the staged return to school, then everyone back on site, to finally this week, the almost complete easing of restrictions, including Year 9 Camp and tonight's Year 12 formal. We have had a total of four people with COVID in the school grounds whilst potentially infectious, and thankfully no evidence of transmission on site thus far. We held a community pop-up vaccination centre in our Gym and 974 members of our school and local community took the opportunity to get immunised. To add to the mix, we had a school day (and Year 12 exams) without power back on Friday October 29. Despite these (and many other) challenges, it has been great to return to on site schooling. 

COVID Safety

It remains important that even without masks being mandatory, that we continue to maintain COVID safety, particularly continuing to get immunised (see below) and staying away from school if you have any cold or flu like symptoms. From the vantage point of my office, I’ve seen lots of teachers taking the opportunity to take their classes outside for all or parts of lessons. An upgrade to our existing mechanical ventilation system, to increase the amount of fresh air that comes through our central air control system, was completed today.

Exams

Our Unit 3/4, Year 11 and now Year 10 exams have been completed successfully. A big thanks to David Snaddon and Eve Lamb for all of their work (particularly contingency planning) around this. During the Unit 3/4 exams we needed to provide a ‘Primary Close Contact’ room for four exams, so that students could complete their exams even when they were otherwise isolating.

Some of our Year 12 students were featured in 'The Age' in this article and in the nightly news bulletins - if you missed it, you can find the Channel 7 report here. Snippets of our school were also seen on Channels 9 and 10.

Vaccination Pop Up - This weekend in Coburg

Historical Society Video

I invite you to view "We Went to Coburg High", a video from the Coburg High School Historical Society. We hope to celebrate the 105th/106th anniversary of Coburg High School in 2022!

Kwong Lee Dow Scholarship

We congratulate Lucy Christou on being selected from over 1,500 applicants to receive the Kwong Lee  Dow,  University of Melbourne Scholarship. The scholarship will offer Lucy a  program of events and activities focused on expanding academic and personal horizons at University of Melbourne. These include a welcome event, VCE revision lectures, personal development workshops, overnight adventures on campus, celebration events with family and more. Students are selected based on achieving academic excellence as well as demonstrating leadership potential. We congratulate Lucy on her consistent dedication to her learning and we appreciate the excellent leadership in our community. 

VFLW/NAB League star

Congratulations Mia Haas for being selected to play  for the  Darebin Falcons VLFW, as well as the Northern Knights in the upcoming NAB league.  Mia will have a busy summer ahead with training four times a week and games on Sunday. You can check out Mia’s upcoming games when the NAB league fixture is announced on the AFL website. Mia is also kicking goals at CHS and will be leading the school as one of our four School Captains in 2022. Well done Mia.  We are very proud of you! 

School Captains 2022

Big congratulations to Zoe B, Merched E, Luna D and Mia H who were recently announced as the Coburg High School Captains for 2022. I met with each earlier this week and I look forward to working with them to bring about the initiatives, events and changes they would like to bring about during 2022.

School Council Corner

We recently met with our local member of parliament, Lizzie Blandthorn, to discuss the facilities needs of the school. We are hopeful of Masterplan funding to address the needs of our students. My thanks to our Facilities and Communications Council sub-committees who have developed the Masterplan document you can see below. We are daring to dream for our big and growing school!

Other issues recently addressed at School Council have included:

• Council wrote to local MPs expressing their support of the AEU's campaign for better pay and conditions for school staff.
• We noted the Herald Sun article featuring our very own Gary Vella regarding Bell Street safety. Cate Hall (School Council President), Gary and I wrote to the Roads Minister on behalf of Council earlier this week to advocate for improved and safer access to our school, particularly for those walking, riding and catching public transport to school
• Council looks forward to thanking Stewart Milner, who has taken up the Executive Principal role at the new Centre for Higher Education Studies, for his exceptional leadership of the school for the last four years.

Brent Houghton

Acting Principal