Brentwood Newsletter

Principal's Report

Green Team

Congratulations to our Green Team and coordinating teachers Belinda Kemp and Venkat Kalva. A three-time award winner, our Green Space (sustainability garden), has been shortlisted as one of the finalists for this year's Victorian Schools Garden Awards. The awards ceremony is going to be held at the Royal Botanic Gardens on 21 November and hosted by Costa Georgiadis, ABC TV host of Gardening Australia. We wish them luck and congratulate them for their great work in the Green Space and for educating the whole community on their sustainability initiatives this year.

 

 

In their own words, the Brentwood Green Team have had a ‘fun’tastic year, this year! They have continued to work on Energy, Waste and Biodiversity modules of the ResourceSmart Schools program. New projects and milestones this year include:

  • Our existing solar PV system was upgraded by a further 68 kW to increase the total capacity to 98 kW. The combined solar system is going to generate 128116 kWh of electricity and reduce 134 tons of CO2 emissions every year.
  • Four students represented Brentwood at the Global Table Food Summit held in Melbourne in September. This gave an opportunity for the Green Team to demonstrate their leadership skills in front of global leaders.
  • More than 65 native plants were planted along Watsons Road for the Brentwood Tree Day.
  • Brentwood was nominated as finalists at the ResourceSmart schools’ awards under the ‘Student action team of the year’ and ‘Teacher of the year’ categories.
  • Received 3-star certification for completing the Core, Energy and Waste modules of the Resource Smart Schools Program.
  • Brentwood was nominated as finalist at the Victorian Schools Garden Awards.
  • Collected and donated over 400 old textbooks to ‘Give a Textbook’ charity that is going to send the books to high schools in the Philippines
  • Organised Staff Professional Development by Cyrelle from Sustainability Victoria on Values and behavior change and biodiversity.
  • The Biodiversity audit indicated that Brentwood’s Habitat Quality score has improved from 51 in 2016 to 68 (/100) this year.

 

As always, the Green Team would like to thank the unconditional support extended to them by staff, students and parents to help them achieve our goals.

 

Peter Rhodes, Associate Principal