Principal Report
Welcome to Rolling Hills Newsletter, I hope you enjoy the new format.
Best wishes,
Craig Bradley
Principal
A great start to the year...
A warm thank you to everyone who has contributed to a great start to 2020. Our students arrived at school with their smart uniforms, resources and an eager step in their new shoes. Thank you to those families who have paid their resource fees and school fees. It has helped us make a seamless start to our school year, with teachers able to start ordering the resources they need to make their classes the very best they can be. If you still need to make a payment for resources or fees please contact our school office who will be able to help in any way.
Compass
As well as a new newsletter, we are working on updating Compass with information that can easily be accessed online rather than sending lots of paper home. I am sure we all agree this is better for the world and great modelling for our children.
You can use Compass to contact your child's teacher. Please be aware that during the day they are busy with classes and in the evening they are busy with their own families. I trust that they will contact you in a reasonable time frame. Compass does not replace the face to face catch ups that happen across the school. We all value these as well.
School review
The school is in a review. This is a process that happens every 4 years. It involves DET linking a reviewer to our school along with two challenge partners. Our reviewer is Jane Warren, an ex-primary Principal with many years of experience. Our challenge partners are Shaun McClare from Kalinda PS and Ann Stratford from Mooroolbark College. Joining them is the Senior Education Improvement Leader for Yarra Ranges, Dee Deklijn.
The team attended the Validation Day on 5th February where they explored the strengths and challenges our leaders had indentified. The review team will return on Monday 17th February to conduct fieldwork. A small parent forum will run on 17th February at 9.00am. If you would like to take part please drop me an email mailto:bradley.craig.c@edumail.vic.gov.au
A report to the community will be shared later in the term when the review is complete.
Attendance
From time to time children are ill. On those days please access Compass and add a note to say your child will be absent. Every day at 9.45am we will send an SMS if your child is absent and you have not added a reason. This is a DET policy and ensures that we are keeping children safe as we can.
On days when your child is not feeling like school but is not ill we really encourage you to still bring your child to school. Attendance at school is very important and will be a big focus this year for us. Last year some children had more days off than I am comfortable with and I would like to see their school attendance improve this year.
ICT
Over the summer we have updated our network server, audited our current machines and purchased 60 new notebook computers. These will be allocated to the grade 3/4 area.
The IT team have allocated iPads to the grade 1/2 area for this year. The existing notebooks have been updated and allocated to the grade 5/6 area. There are also bookable iPads and Notebooks in the new library space.
We will also be moving to G-suite through google for our email and document storage. In the future we will be issuing students with logins for email in the upper primary.
Buildings and grounds
The main updates over the holidays have been the library space and main building carpet. The grade 5/6 rooms have had their small locker bays removed with new ones added near the windows. The entrance of each room has been painted. The boys toilets in the main building have been refreshed and a new paint job added to the canteen.
The Boorai and admin area have been deep cleaned ready for the start of the new school year. We hope you like these updates. There are many more planned.
Lunch clubs
Offering students a range of activities in-class and outside of class is important to me as a Principal. From Monday 17th February we will launch our lunch time activity program. The first and second half of lunch will have different activities. They are on a first come, first served bases and once the number of students reaches 20 they will be asked to try another activity.
Watch out for the schedule next week.
Student Banking
As you are now aware we are no longer offering student banking with the Commonwealth Bank. To give students time to redeem their tokens for rewards they are able to bring their tokens to the office and select an item by Friday 28th February 2020. Just remember that you have to have 10 tokens to redeem for rewards.
Thank you to our School Banking
Co-ordinators
We would like to thank Hailey Grigson and Lisa Janssen for volunteering their time over the last few years to run the School Banking program at our school