school council

dear families 

A warm welcome to family and friends for the new school year from School Council. We hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable new year and festive season. Like everyone in the school community, our thoughts and wishes have been with those individuals and communities’ impact by the bush fires.

The new year in a new decade brings with it the promise of exciting new initiatives and activities at our amazing school on the hill. School Council look forward to being part of some of these activities and supporting the school community in bring some new initiatives to life.

Everyone on School Council and the many Sub Committees are keenly aware of how precious family and personal time is to us all. With that said, we urge everyone to reflect if they have some time to get involved. The culture of our wonderful school community is nurtured by the ability of family and friends to give of themselves. We have elections for School Council in March, but every Sub-Committee is looking for members. You can join; Building & Grounds, Community Events Team, Education Committee, Finance Committee or OSHC committee. There are so many other areas to get involved, including; Sprout, Communications Work Party, grants applications, working bees, just to name a few.

School Leadership, School Council and some amazing individuals continue to work furiously in the background to finalise our position in relation to the building program which seeks to take advantage of the $6.2 million promised to BNW in late 2018. We are close to finalising the plans and having them signed off so they may be submitted to the Department of Education in hope of achieving funding in this year’s State Government budget cycle. We are doing everything to we can to realise the funding this year and perhaps start work very late this year, but equally we are beholden to the whim of Government budget cycles and conditions. We are planning to ramp up our communication with the school community and outside community in the coming weeks and months about this building program.

An exciting project for BNW this year is the School Review which will be coordinated by the school leadership team, require significant input from School Council and involve much of the school community. This is our opportunity to confirm what an amazing school we are all part of and how the future direction of the school will be conceived. Equally it’s a very important deliverable to the Department of Education. More information will be shared with the school community later in Term 1.

At School Council we are acutely aware there are opportunities to communicate more often and more thoroughly with the school community. We are taking this challenge onboard this year and are quickly activating some plans to share more information with you all and therefore increase transparency on what we do and what the school is doing. I really value any input from anyone on how we can bridge this gap and deliver greater insight to school community.

Finally, we are going to publish online and around the school more information about who your School Councillors are and who is in each of the Sub-Committees, but in the meantime, I thought I would quickly note the current School Council team:

Sam Cohen – President                                  Aaron Hemsley                  Debbie Wood

Van Sowerwine – Vice President                Stacey Roberts                   Nirvana Adey

Matt Price – Secretary                                    Natasha Colangelo           Tanya Pittard

Hannah Reid                                                       Wendy White

I hope the start of the school year has been rewarding and all our children are already enjoying the experience offered by this amazing school. If you want to contact me please do not hesitate to call or text me on 0412 375 061 or send me an email on sam.cohen@iinet.net.au

Kind regards

Sam Cohen