Principal's Report 

Status of School Closure

Footscray West Primary School will remain closed tomorrow Friday 24th July.

Unfortunately, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) protocols for a safe return have not been completed. While the deep clean was conducted, contact tracing is progressing slowly.

While this is the first (truncated) newsletter for this delayed term, I do hope that with a series of Flexibuzz announcements, an info video last Friday and a start of term assembly video on Monday, you feel we have communicated regularly and relevantly.

Appreciations and news

It has been a challenging start, with a necessary school closure announced on Monday evening. A strange irony that for 95% of our students and families the decision that remote and flexible learning at home would continue therefore has not required a major change to their routines. We acknowledge and empathise for the parents who have been relying on access to school and Their Care this week.

It is a complete understatement that this first week of a delayed term 3 is not quite the start to term that we anticipated.

During the extended holidays our teaching staff spent the time industriously preparing for another extended period of Remote and Flexible Learning at Home 2.0, perhaps abbreviated to R&FL@H 2.0!

The feedback from team leaders during our whole staff video conference on Wednesday attested to the skills and resilience many students, staff, parents and carers have developed.

I appreciate this email that was sent through today by one parent that says in part: ‘Last time round, although my children were in grade 2 they did different tasks each day. As you can imagine this was a juggle for us all, adding another level of stress. This time however they are doing the same tasks, which has helped immensely. The tasks themselves have been easier to understand and manage, I haven't needed to supervise them the whole time.

Please pass on my appreciation to the team. It is evident that they have taken on feedback and are all working above and beyond their roles, this is not going unnoticed.  The saying "it takes a village to raise a child" has resonated with me a lot over the past few months, our teachers are part of our village and our family appreciates all that they do. ‘

Due to the physical closure of school we have held over Pupils of the Week until next week.

Best regards

Brendan