Principal's Message

Anthony Jackson - Acting Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

Lockdown Extension - 2 Weeks

Thank you for your continued support during these difficult times and as always we appreciate your support. Due to the ongoing level of community transmission of COVID-19 in Victoria, the current lockdown across metropolitan Melbourne will be extended until 11:59pm on Thursday 2nd September. Based on advice from the Victorian Chief Health Officer, all Victorian schools will continue with remote and flexible learning and, at this stage, return to school on Friday 3rd September. To help slow the spread of the virus, we need your support in complying with the new restrictions and helping our public health team to get ahead of this virus. The Government requests parents, carers and families continue to do the right thing by following all health directives. This includes making careful and supportive choices about accessing on-site supervision at school.

Parents and carers in metropolitan Melbourne can now only request on-site supervision for their child/ren in the following categories:

A) Children where both parents and or carers are considered authorised workers who cannot work from home, work for an authorised provider and where no other supervision arrangements can be made. Parents and carers who are authorised workers will need an authorised worker permit from their employers to access on-site supervision for their child/ren. A copy of your authorised worker permit/s must be submitted to the school as soon as practicable.

B) Children experiencing vulnerability, including: Where a parent/carer indicates that a student with a disability is vulnerable because they cannot learn from home, and/or informs the school the student is vulnerable due to family stress. This may apply to students enrolled in specialist schools and students with a disability enrolled in mainstream schools.

If your circumstances match the above categories and your child is eligible to attend our onsite program, please ensure you have completed the onsite attendance form and send this in with your child.

Thank you for your support in reducing the risk of spreading COVID-19 across our community. We continue to have a reduced number of staff and students onsite to avoid the spread of COVID-19 in our community. If your child is able to learn from home – they must learn from home. There will continue to be reduced staff onsite to decreased the risk of community transmission of COVID-19. This may not be your child’s class teacher. The learning program delivered onsite will be the same as that delivered to students learning from home. We have allocated the majority of staff to continue to work from home to set and respond to learning tasks on SeeSaw and our other online learning platforms. We are also setting up additional activity grids to supplement learning online and regular face-to-face check-ins/assemblies for students to connect with their class, teacher and ES. This will be over Microsoft Teams and your child’s teacher will be in touch to organise how and when this will happen for your child.

Year 11/12 students who are enrolled in a metropolitan Melbourne TAFE, non-school senior secondary providers or other training organisation (e.g. Mambourin) must continue to learn from home unless they are on the Authorised Providers and Authorised Workers list. Parents/Carers must ensure that the Authorised Worker Permit issued by the training organisation has been signed and completed for your child.

We are trusting our school community to continue to do the right thing at this time, by complying with the restrictions in place and making careful and supportive decisions that limit movement and risk of spreading COVID-19 across our community.

Premier's Announcement: https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/extended-melbourne-lockdown-keep-victorians-safe-0

Individual Learning Plans (ILPs)

Parents and carers should have now received your child's ILPs by email. These are also now available on Xuno. Parents and carers will be able to request a hard copy of their child’s report if they would like one. This will be more cost effective, sustainable for the environment and avoid postal delays experienced by some families in Term 2. An ILP outlines a modified educational program with long term (annual) and short term goals (semester) and are based upon the Victorian Curriculum (Prep-Year 10). These are informed from our current assessments of what your child can already do. For Year 11/12 students who are working towards achieving their ASDAN and VCAL outcomes, these will be reported to you in your end of Semester 2 reports. All students at Jackson receive reasonable adjustments to meet their individual learning needs. These include: differentiated teaching and learning, supplementary adjustments (from our Allied Health and Wellbeing Teams) and other support strategies.

$10 million Asset Management Plan

This week, School Council have signed off our schematic design our the $10 million school modernisation and upgrade project. The architects have developed a revised plan for the schematic design and perspective 3D concepts of the project. This will be based upon permanent modular construction. See the proposed designs below. Scroll to the right to view the concept plans and designs.

Admin Building & Specialist Learning Areas

Parent/Carers/Guardian Survey (PCGS)

Our school is conducting a survey to find out what parents/carers think of our school. The Parent/Carers Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education and Training (DET) that is conducted amongst a sample of randomly selected parents/carers. If you have been included in this random sample (30% of families) you should have already received your online link and PIN. Please do not share this with other family members.

The Parent/Carers Survey has been extended until 3rd September. The survey will be conducted online, it only takes 20 minutes to complete, and can be accessed at any convenient time within these dates on desktop computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The online survey will be available in a range of languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Chin (Hakha), Hindi, Japanese, Somali, Turkish, Punjabi and Greek. Parents/Carers who complete the survey will go into a draw to win a $50 Coles/Myer Voucher.

If you have been randomly selected, I thank you in advance for your participation and feedback to improve our school.

Vaccinations

As part of the phased COVID-19 vaccination rollout, more Victorian parents, carers, and students (aged 16 years and over) are now able to receive the COVID-19 vaccines. With more appointments now available over the next two weeks, we encourage you to book your vaccine at Victorian Government’s COVID-19 vaccine online booking system. For more information about eligibility, refer to coronavirus.vic.gov.au or use the Australian Government’s COVID-19 vaccine eligibility checker. We are trusting our school community to continue to do the right thing at this time, by complying with the restrictions in place and making careful and supportive decisions that limit movement and risk of spreading COVID-19 across our community.

Wellbeing Supports for Families

Our families wellbeing is our current priority. I know this is an uncertain, frustrating and difficult time for many. Learning tasks continue to be available via SeeSaw and offline activity grids. To connect your child to your teacher and classmates we are now offering regular check-ins via Microsoft Teams. For your child to be marked "present" during remote learning all they need to do is connect with their class teacher (via SeeSaw, other online platforms or Microsoft Teams) or complete an activity online or offline. To reduce family stress there is no requirement from the school for students to complete all learning activities set by the teacher. If you require any support from school at this time, please do not hesitate to get in touch through your child’s class teacher. There are a number of supports available. These include:

I will continue to keep you updated with current information about COVID-19 as it is made available to me. Thank you for your continued support and flexibility at this time. Look after yourselves and your families at this time.

Stay safe,

Anthony