Buninyong PS Newsletter

Principal's Report

REMOTE AND FLEXIBLE LEARNING

If someone mentioned remote and flexible learning a few short months ago, we’d all be left scratching our heads, but now this is the reality we face.  Despite the pace of change and the amount of learning we’ve all had to undertake, everyone has adapted really well and is making the best possible of our current circumstances.

 

These first 2 weeks of remote and flexible learning is all about learning the technology related to video conferencing and accessing Compass Learning Tasks, while establishing new learning routines.  In time we will step up the learning rigour and ask that you be patient in the mean-time.  This is explained in more detail in the Teaching and Learning section of this newsletter.

Once again, thanks to our staff who did a power of work preparing for remote and flexible learning and have hit the ground running to deliver this new mode of learning.  This has stretched us all, but everyone has risen to the occasion and is doing a brilliant job. 

 

Well done to our students who have generally adapted really well and are engaging with their video conferences and learning tasks.  Once again, we have seen the capacity of children to adapt and learn.

A massive thank you to our parents who have also adapted well and we are hearing lots of great examples of how families are adjusting and managing remote learning.  We’ll be sharing some of the strategies being adopted by families in the coming weeks as a means of helping each other out.  Our state and country have done such a good job in minimising the spread of Covid-19 and we thank parents for doing their best to keep their children home, thus reducing the likelihood of person-person infection.  We understand this isn’t easy for many families and appreciate your efforts.  The Wellbeing section of this newsletter provides you with support and guidance with regards to looking after ourselves at this time.

 

We understand that a number of families face financial hardship at this time due to lost employment and a general down-turn in business.  We would like to support families doing it tough by helping with costs associated with sending your child to Buninyong PS in 2020.  We are having discussions with external organisations to make this possible.  If your income has been significantly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and you are struggling to make ends meet, please give me a call. All related discussions will be highly confidential.

 

In terms of transitioning out of the current restrictions, there has been no suggestion from DET that schools will re-open any time soon, so it is likely that current arrangements will remain for some time.

SCHOOL COUNCIL ELECTIONS

With the School Council election process complete, we can now announce that the following parents and teachers have been elected to join School Council for 2020/21:

  • Parent Representatives – Jane Gilbert, Debbie Rybicki, Damian Shackell and Nyree Wilson who are all new to School Council. 
  • DET (Department of Education & Training) Representatives  - Dave Young and Scott McGlynn who return for another 2 year stint as DET reps.

They join Paula Dekok, Katie Adamson, Graeme Benn, Kartya de Graaff, Tegan Winzar, Christy Roberts, Luke Blunden and myself in making up our School Council for the coming 12 months.

A big thank you to our retiring School Councillors, those being Liam Murphy, Mark Verdoorn, Deb Harris, Lisa James, Catriona Fox and Melinda Stewart. Our School Council has worked very effectively over the past few years, so we appreciate the efforts of this group. 

We have our AGM and the April meeting on Monday night, which will be the first meetings for our new School Councillors.

FACILITIES

As always, we took the opportunity over the holiday break to get a few things done.  On this occasion, the works included:

  • Scotsburn Bore - Continuing the process of connecting the bore at Scotsburn to our tanks.  We now have a continuous supply of water at Scotsburn, which will be amazing after many years of barely having enough water to meet our needs.
  • Watering Systems – Some new watering systems were installed to new and existing garden beds at our Scotsburn Campus.
  • Home-Eco Room – The internal walls have now been plastered and painted.  We expect kitchen cabinets, floor coverings and appliances to be in by the end of term.  Our plan is to have the home-eco room up and running for the start of next term.
  • Painting – Painting the external of the admin building is now complete.  This has been a big job and has included quite a bit of timber repair work along the way.  Painting the external walls of the library/prep block is now complete also.
  • Vegetable Patch - Simon (our maintenance man) has been undertaking some jobs to improve our capacity to engage the kids in horticulture.  We now have some compost bays, a potting bench and a small hot house and are looking forward to having groups of students use these spaces.
  • Fencing – Over the past 12 months we have been improving boundary fencing in an effort to keep our students safe.  This week we have new fences and gates being installed at the north end of the staff car park and at the east end of the school.
  • ANZAC Memorial – The area surrounding our Gallipoli tree received some much needed attention and is now looking terrific.  Thanks to Nigel from Buninyong Garden and Rural Supplies for supporting us with this project. 
  • Mulching – Simon got to mulch quite a few garden beds across our school over the break.  We would like make a special thanks to Scott and Rob from RML Limited Access (Specialist Arborists) for donating several truck-loads of mulch and their ongoing support.