Principals' message

Week 4 news

This week it has been great to see our ‘getting to know you’ parent-teacher meetings taking place. These sessions are a valuable opportunity to build the home-school partnership and for teachers to both receive and share information about the children in their class. Thank you to our families for making their bookings and joining with us to work together to support our students.

This week will be our last week for Foundation students to have Wednesday as a non-school day. From Monday 27th February we look forward to having our newest students attend school full time.

Over the next two weeks we will continue to improve on the organisation and presentation in the Napier St building. We will be improving school bag storage outside rooms, re-establishing the library, removing and disposing of unneeded items, and removing the cardboard boxes as much as possible.

I am very happy to announce that Fitzroy Primary School has been approved as a First Call Fund Partner School for 2023. This means that we will be able to access all performances and workshops in the schools program at the Arts Centre for free. We also will continue to have Fred, our French music teacher, taking music lessons upstairs at the top of the eastern stairway.

Over the past two weeks I have been enjoying talking with students in the yard at recess and lunchtimes. I have seen our children playing well together during breaks, and it is especially good to see our senior students helping and playing with our junior students. Both staff and I have seen lots of younger and older students playing soccer together on the soccer field at break times.

Whilst it is great to see everyone playing well together, we have noticed that sometimes the older students can accidently hurt or run into younger students without realizing it. To help with this we have established the routine of Foundation-Year 2 students having use of the soccer field at recess and Year 3-6 at lunchtime. This allows our students to play with peers of similar age and provides equitable opportunity for all students to have access to this space during breaks. This is an approach that was used effectively in 2022 in the George St playground. All other play spaces in the yard are running as multi-age spaces.

We have recently established a passive play space for children outside the office at recess and lunchtime. Children in this space can play board or card games, join in art/craft activities, or sit and talk with friends. It provides a quieter, cooler play area for children and is supervised by a teacher and education support staff member. It has proven to be quite popular so far with children from all year levels joining in these activities.

We would like to encourage families to pack nude food lunchboxes, sending food items in reusable containers. Although we eat our food inside before recess and lunch, we still find some litter and rubbish in the yard by the end of the day. Nude food will help keep our yard areas litter free and will also help reduce waste going into the environment. We have ordered some more bins to be outside in the yard for those times when students have waste packaging and for outside school hours.

School Development Update

Fitzroy Primary School is a fantastic school and is currently in the midst of a multi-year regeneration. This growth and development project began in 2019 (see attached overview) with the successful appointment of our full time Principal - Angela, and implementation of the popular French Bilingual program. It now includes the regeneration of our school’s physical environment, with works to upgrade both the Napier St and George St buildings.

Right now we are in the middle of the buildings upgrade program, with Napier St having Stage 1 upgrade completed in 2022 (new toilets, lift installation and comms infrastructure) and George St undertaking a major upgrade in 2023. Although these upgrades may cause some discomfort while we negotiate changes to our spaces, it will be well worth it in the long term once we have two great facilities available for 2024. It is important to remember that this time will pass and the good news is that the children are continuing to learn, play and grow together.

Art Show

The Art Show has been scheduled to take place on Tuesday 4th April, with previous plans from 2022 being brought forward. We will also combine the art show with a family picnic on the grounds and celebrate a great first term together. Thanks to Leah, Bianca, Tony and our other families for their work on this event so far.

Pupil Free Dates 2023

Each year schools allocate 4 pupil free days that are school council approved. Staff complete a range of important tasks on these days, such as professional learning and program planning. The four dates for 2023 are:

Friday 27th January (state-wide date pre-determined by Department of Education)
Friday 10th March
Friday 11th August
Monday 6th November

There will also be a pupil free professional practice day on Thursday 1st June. Professional Practice days are a day for teachers to perform a range of tasks related to their classroom work and are part of the Victorian Government Schools Agreement.

Air Conditioning

After a cool start to the year, the last two weeks have seen our traditional summer heat well and truly arrive. Students and staff have managed the hot conditions well and we have put in place arrangements to help students avoid the worst of the heat. As of Friday we are in the process of having air conditioners installed in all classrooms that don’t already have them. This week we have been able to have the Prep classroom air conditioner installed, with all other rooms due to receive theirs by the end of next week. Please note that on Tuesday a crane truck will be at school to lift the air conditioning external units onto the roof for installation.

Staffing Update

The Fitzroy Primary community will be very sad to say farewell to some staff members over the coming weeks.

Kerryn Cormick has resigned from the Department of Education and is moving to Queensland to be closer to family. We thank Kerryn for all her passion and effort in creating a great PE program over the past year.

Maria Ferreira Silva has also resigned from our school to pursue a career as a qualified teacher. Maria has been a valuable member of our education support team helping children in class over the past two years.

Hatice Altiparmak has been appointed as Business Manager at Collingwood College. Over the past 25 years Hatice has contributed immensely to Fitzroy Primary School and we know Collingwood is lucky to have her join their team.

Recruitment of new staff members is currently taking place.

School Council Nominations

The nomination process will begin from Monday for parents to either self-nominate or be nominated to join school council.

There will be 3 openings for parents to join council for a 2-year term from 2023-25.

School council plays an important role in school governance and meets twice per term.

If you are interested in joining school council, please fill out a nomination form, available from the office, and return it to the office by Monday

-Nathan Moore ( Acting Principal) & Andrea Hennessey ( Assistant Principal)