Keeping Students & Staff Safe Upon Returning to School

Since the announcement of returning to school was made, we have been busily planning with a large focus on how we keep our students and staff safe during this time. Outlined below is some key information relating to how parents/carers can play a role in keeping students and staff safe over the coming weeks.

Unwell Students & Staff

Making sure that we monitor illness of ourselves and our children closely is going to be critical over the next few months. Any staff member or student displaying the signs and symptoms associated with COVID-19 should remain at home until signs and symptoms resolve and seek medical advice if needed.

Should a student present with signs or symptoms associated with COVID-19, parents/carers will be called for immediate collection. We understand that this may be frustrating as it can impact your work life and plans for the day, but rest assured we are doing this in the best interest of our whole community and their safety. Students can then return once well.

Parents Wishing to Keep Their Child at Home

The Department of Education and Training (DET) has made it clear that all students must return to school when assigned to do so over the next few weeks, those being:

P-2 Students on Tuesday, May 26
3-6 Students on Tuesday, June 9

We understand that there are some students who have medical advice that states otherwise and that’s ok. Should this be applicable to your family, please contact the school to speak with a principal relating to that medical advice and the support for learning that can be offered.

Should a parent elect to keep their child home without relevant medical advice or an attendance plan, unfortunately no learning will be provided by the school at this time and the child will be marked absent. This will be standard practice across the state.

Hygiene - Access to Sanitiser, Hand Washing & Cleaning

During the return to school, we will have plenty of sanitiser available for students to access in common areas and classrooms. Children will be reminded to wash/sanitise their hands at the following times throughout the day:

Upon entering school
Before brain break / fruit snack
Before eating snack and lunch
Upon returning back to the classroom after snack, lunch or toileting

Staff will be continuing the work on educating students around correct hygiene through the use of highly visible resources in each room. Those being:

Be a Soapy Hero
Cover Your Cough
Wash Your Hands

In addition to this, high contact touch points such as tables, door handles, and toilets will be cleaned by a team of onsite cleaners throughout the day. This is in addition to already existing cleaning processes.

In the yard, nominated sets of adventure play equipment will also be sanitised throughout the day.

Should your family not want your child to use the supplied sanitiser, we ask that you send a suitable supply in a small container that your child can carry with them.

Use of Adventure Playgrounds

Upon returning to school, nominated adventure playgrounds will be accessible for students to use.

Students will be required to sanitise their hands prior to and after using the playgrounds with a sufficient supply of sanitiser positioned at the entry of the playground.

All other playgrounds will be out of action.

Use of Shared Equipment

During the return to school, we are working with staff to reduce the amount of sharing of equipment as much as possible. This in itself is quite a task, however there may be times where students use shared items such as class iPads, laptops, guided reading books, etc.

Through the use of sanitiser before and after using shared equipment, along with cleaning equipment and placing it into quarantine, we feel confident that we can manage resources in a safe and practical manner.

Use of Drink Bottles

All parents are strongly encouraged to send their child with a drink bottle each day and check that they have it when departing home. We don’t want our children drinking out of the drinking fountains and will be working with staff to ensure students have access to their drink bottles during break times.

Physical/Social Distancing

Managing adults onsite

Physical/social distancing of adults is critical in keeping everyone safe and along with DET guidance on visitors, we will be limiting access to our school sites (both Buninyong and Scotsburn campuses) to those delivering essential school services and operations.

We know that this is different to what the normal has been, but again we cannot reiterate how important this is for us all to adhere to.

As such, parents are only to go beyond the school gate if absolutely necessary. No parents should enter hallways or classrooms until further notice.

Should you have a query, we ask that you call or email the staff member that you wish to speak to.

To remind parents/carers of our social distancing measures key signage will be placed at entry points at both campuses.

At times, where there is a need to come on site (e.g. Dropping of loan iPads), a staff member will call you to confirm the process. In relation to the return of iPads, a staff member will be calling relevant families in years P-2 to advise of the process later this week.

Just like you, we hope that this all resolves as soon as practical and thank you in advance for supporting the safety of our community.

Drop off and collection of students

For the remainder of this term we will slightly stagger the end of each school day, with classes being dismissed gradually from 3:24 pm – 3:30 pm. Given the gradual nature of morning drop offs and the fact we have so many entry points to the school grounds (Buninyong Campus), we won’t be staggering the start of each school day. Low numbers at Scotsburn mean there is no need to stagger the school start time either.

Dismissal times for each of the classes are listed below:

Buninyong Campus:

3:24pm:	3:26pm:	3:28pm:	3:30pm:
PSD 1KA 2NS 3BB 4AC 5CC 6JG	PPD 1JH 2KN 3AC 4WG 5DM 6LM	PKM 1LR 2DE 3NP 4MM 5DS 6JM	PRW 1RS 2KS 3MP 4CV 5PW 6JO

Scotsburn Campus:

* Given bus routes and other small campus responsibilities, dismissal of students will start 2 minutes prior to that of Buninyong campus.

3:22pm:	3:24pm:	3:26pm:
SC3	SC2	SC1

Please note: Adults are expected to adhere to physical/social distancing at all times and this will be monitored at both campuses to ensure the safety of our community.

We are confident that our community will do their best with this and that further measures won't need to be implemented.

Staggered Break Times

Upon all students returning to school on June 9, we will be staggering break times for students and staff. This will ensure children are able to spread out in the yard, whilst also allowing our staff appropriate access to the staffroom and other shared spaces in the school.

During the final weeks of term 2, classes will break for recess and lunch at the following times:

3-6:
- Recess break between 10:35-11am
- Lunch break between 12:10-1pm
P-2:
- Recess break between 11:05-11:30am
- Lunch break between 1:10-2pm

Senior students in years 3-6 will also have modified eating times and will conduct a movement/regulation break in the afternoon.

No Assemblies - Friday Broadcast to Continue

During this next few weeks, we want to avoid large gatherings of students and adults and will therefore be continuing with our Friday afternoon broadcasts at 2pm.

No onsite assemblies will take place until further advised.

Bus Travel

Bus routes will continue as normal during this time. We have been advised that busses will have access to sanitiser and will space students in accordance with physical/social distancing guidelines.

Broadcast Reminder - Friday, May 15 (2pm)

A reminder to everyone that this week’s live broadcast will take place at 2pm on Friday.

To connect to this week’s broadcast, please follow the steps below:

Make sure Webex Meetings is downloaded and installed prior to Friday.
You can click on the link below to access the meeting at 2pm, but will be unable to do so until Scott starts the event. Alternatively, you can open up the Webex Meetings application on a device in your household and join a meeting. This is where you can enter the number listed below.
If you are prompted to put in details, please do so and join. You can put in a false email address if need be: e.g. scott@mail.com
If you are directed to ‘RUN A TEMPORARY APPLICATION’, please do so.

Meeting Link:

https://eduvic.webex.com/eduvic/onstage/g.php?MTID=e00dc42ea9c8722520bbe4b1b4c3d4543

Meeting Event Number:

788 633 213

Password:

bps

Please note:

* The above room number and web link changes each week due to a new event being created.

Remote Learning Winners from Last Week: May 15

Congratulations to our Remote Learning Award winners from last week! We’re proud of the great work you have been doing in a difficult time. Keep it up and we can’t wait to see who receives the awards for this week.

Buninyong PS Newsletter

TERM 2, ISSUE 5 · 19 May 2020

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