School Council

School Council Update

Dear Students and Parents,

We recently held our second School Council meeting of the year and I felt it was important to let you know some of the decisions we’ve had to make with the changing outlook currently and for the year ahead.

Each year we have to ratify the annual budget based on final school funding being issued from the Victorian State Government, and taking into account major projects, maintenance, school programs and additional incomes from after school programs. The COVID pandemic has meant readjusting many line items and ensuring that we can still ensure our accounts are balanced for the year, and ensure we have provisions in place for events beyond our control.

The important message is we believe we can get through the year and ensure our finances balance, and that we can fund the priority activities for Students and Teaching outcomes.

However, within this we have recognized there is a lower likelihood that many of our major fundraising events will be able to go ahead. Consequently, we have removed any assumption of this money being available to fund new projects while ensuring that we can complete committed works.

This means that we will defer adding additional doors into the multi-purpose room until we are more confident around what will happen with costs through the year. This enables some budget contingency if needed. However, we are still on track to complete a number of significant works that have been already budgeted.

The Prep Courtyard has now been finished, and with ramp access, is now a fantastic space to access the building for our prep children and families and has been receiving great feedback from children. This was all paid for from prior fundraising.

Around the Prep Courtyard, we will soon be starting to replace the wooden fascia boards. These are in poor repair and their replacement will ensure the safety of the area and along with planting in the courtyard garden beds, will finalise the prep courtyard area.

The final major piece of work being planned and due for completion in June is the new all abilities play area. This will see the redevelopment of the Gold Street end of the playground along the periphery of the basketball court. This work is majority funded by the State Government following a grant awarded by the State Government sought by one of our previous School Councillors – Sam Day. We look forward to seeing all the children being able to use this very soon.

The School Council is committed to ongoing improvements of the school where our budget permits, but our priority is ensuring teaching and student outcomes come first. Our hope is that some of our assumptions around finances can be reversed later in the year.

I’ll provide another update shortly from the next Council meeting.

Please get in touch if you have any questions.

Kind regards,

Brian Bird