Leadership @ MPS

COVID-19 Update

We have been overwhelmed by the support from you all, our beautiful Monty families, this week. Despite many of you having to manage one (or some) very sad child/ren at home quarantining, you have still reached out to offer support via email or in a practical way, to those of us at school.  Thank you. Words just are not enough right now. 

Our number one priority has been to keep our Monty students safe and although we have not been totally surprised with what has happened this week, we have been devastated with the news that some of our children have become unwell with COVID-19. We wish these children a super, speedy recovery. Our hearts have also been breaking for those children that are required to isolate for 14 days. We understand what this means for each of our students and wish that it could be different. 

Thank you to the staff that have worked tirelessly (including some very late evenings) to provide the Department of Health with information relating to positive cases. This work has meant that we have not had to close the school for the remainder of our students. The task that is now placed on schools to " identify contacts" and feed this information to the Department of Health as well as DET, is enormous. The reason for this current approach is to alleviate some of the pressures on DHHS, and to speed up the contact tracing process so that positive cases are circulating in a school community for as little time as possible. There still seems to be a delay with DHHS making contact with Primary Close Contacts. Please be aware that it is not up to us at MPS to make decisions around when the quarantine period ends. We will continue to communicate what we know, however, if you are unsure about any details, please make contact with DHHS.  

Rapid Antigen Tests:

The latest statement to come to me this afternoon from the DET: 

The implementation of the process for using Rapid Antigen Testing is still being developed.  DET is ensuring that implementation will be workable for schools and equitable across the school community. This process is tightly controlled with DH oversight and not straightforward. We will have to wait until the guidelines have been finalised and provided to schools before we can use it in our school. We expect this to be next week.

2022 - Booklist 

You will be receiving an update via Compass shortly about student Booklists for 2022. In the past, we have ordered and have had student book packs delivered to the school. For 2022, we are changing this process and asking families to order your child's book pack from Maxim online and have your book packs delivered to your home. The logistics of us accepting delivery at school and sorting over 400 packs has now become very complex, particularly as we are working at times with limited staff due to the impact of COVID. We are excited to be moving in this direction with our student/school book lists, particularly now we are all so savvy with online ordering!  

2022 

A separate Compass feed with some details regarding next year will be posted tomorrow.

Take care everyone.

Janene and Bek