Mr Irwin's Message

Hello families and officially welcome back to the 2021 school year. A particular welcome to our new families be it in Foundation or who’ve joined us across the school. We have started the year on 219 enrolments, which is the biggest enrolment the school has ever had. I hope you’ve felt welcomed and settled as the school year starts.

Students in years 1 to 6 spent the first week of school participating in our Learning to Learn program. Their Learning to Learn booklet will be sent home digitally and I’d encourage you to flick through this to gain an understanding of the expectations and routines that have been set for students and their learning. As I said in Friday’s assembly, it’s important students know and act out the behaviours associated with our school values. Our school values are much more than the song we sing at assemblies on a Friday!

Please note the school newsletter is the official method by which school communicates to parents. We try to include all relevant dates of events and happenings around the school. Please make a point of reading the digital newsletter fortnightly on a Tuesday. Families who have provided an email address have been subscribed to iNewsletter and will receive an email when the newsletter is available to view. Alternatively, the latest newsletter and past editions can be viewed on our website and click on the 'Newsletter' tab. If you use Facebook and don’t follow our Facebook page I'd encourage you to do so as it provides a great lens into what happens in class on a daily basis.

Traffic

As we settle into the year you’ll notice with increased enrolments comes increased traffic. It’s really important we work together in the afternoons to keep pick-up time safe and orderly. It was great to see families pitch in and ensure everyone understood the process for parking across the road in the gravel carpark. This carpark allows for two rows of cars in the middle which means families don’t have to reverse and have the risk of a collision or have children running between rows of cars.

My biggest plea with parking remains that both gates are supervised until 3:30pm by staff. If you have older students who are capable of waiting a few minutes until 3:25pm or 3:30pm both parking areas of the school are very quiet. Any families who can ride, walk or scoot to school on days of nice weather can also reduce the amount of traffic we have at pick-up time too. Golden Plains Council has identified parking as an issue to investigate in Teesdale to support growth however for the foreseeable future we will need to manage with the parking facilities we have, and, are very fortunate compared to many schools to have the amount of parking we already do have.

Communicating with Teachers

At Teesdale we pride ourselves on being open and proactive in our communication with parents. This happens in a number of ways including face to face, over the phone and via our Sentral Parent Portal. Teachers are available by appointment to discuss matters related to your child’s learning. In the mornings when you drop your child off and may visit their classroom is not a suitable time to discuss issues in depth. Teachers are beginning to supervise and settle students into their learning for the day and a busy classroom isn’t the ideal place to be discussing issues that may be personal in nature. Now is a good time to make sure you are setup on our Sentral Parent Portal and can message with your child’s teacher. It isn’t an expectation that teacher’s will respond immediately to messages delivered here (particularly if during the day) however teachers will use this as a way to communicate and will respond when available.

Ask Mr Irwin

Thank you for the responses to ‘Ask Mr Irwin’. I’ve been very grateful for the responses I’ve received to this already.

The topic I wanted to cover this week which I received multiple questions about was our two new learning spaces, and the future growth of the school. A concern was raised that these spaces may cause students to become distracted from their learning and aren’t proper ‘classrooms’.

Firstly I’ll speak about the growth of our school. Since I’ve been the Principal here the school has grown around 70 enrolments from 150 to 220. It’s my responsibility as the Principal to carefully manage the enrolment growth of the school. Over the time I’ve been here the only enrolments that have been accepted are those who reside in our Designated Neighbourhood Area.

The school is growing because Teesdale continues to grow. No matter how big or small we are anyone who lives in our school zone is entitled to attend. This is very important because the provision of facilities is managed by the Department of Education. If we have a large percentage of enrolments not living in our zone they may elect to not provide us with additional facilities. Because we have a very high percentage of enrolments who attend our school that live in our zone, this is not a concern for us.

2021 is the first year the school has exceeded it’s enrolment capacity. A school’s capacity is determined by the number of general use classrooms it has multiplied by 25, which is an average class size. Our current capacity therefore is 200. Now we have exceeded this capacity, and this trend is likely to continue, we will come under consideration for additional facilities. The provision of these facilities is determined by the Department of Education. The next likely step to occur is that we will be provided additional portable buildings for us to install and use on site. Knowing this is the likely next step School Council has already discussed the potential allocation of these classrooms to ensure we don’t reduce playground space on our site. However because we’ve only just moved past our capacity the allocation of these facilities doesn’t happen immediately. We could reasonably expect these to be provided in 2022, provided they are granted by the Department.

The other possibility that could happen is that through the state budget the school receives a major capital works grant to expand. I have invited our state MP Gayle Tierney to visit and see our current reality so we aren’t forgotten come budget time.

In the meantime however in making use of two modified spaces I don’t believe families should be concerned at all that these will negatively impact learning. Many schools utilise far more flexible and open spaces all of the time. The key to these spaces running effectively is that the teachers teach expected behaviours to make these spaces calm and orderly. The feedback from students and teachers is that they are excited to use these new learning spaces and whilst not perfect they aren’t disruptive to learning. From what I have seen already in visiting these spaces daily they function effectively with little distraction to students.

In short, we are a school on the grow. Now we have exceeded our capacity the Department will provide additional portable or permanent classrooms in the coming years.

Masks at School

A reminder to families masks are now required indoors in all public spaces which includes here at school. Please limit entering school buildings unless absolutely essential. As always we really appreciate your support and co-operation!

Healthy Lunch Box Choices

For more information go to: https://heas.health.vic.gov.au/schools/healthy-lunchboxes