PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

This week we have finally had a few continuous days of beautiful spring weather. Sunshine and warm weather certainly lifts everyone’s spirits. We are certainly not done with the rain and I hope that the forecast rain in the coming days does not cause more damage to crops and those affected by flood waters.

We have seen an amazing community spirit in our school, with staff and students contributing to creating sandbags for the SES. We know that our wider community is in need of these bags and with little other means to support, we are grateful that we can do this for our community.

A number of our Kerang bus travellers have now been isolated from school for three weeks. We very much look forward to them being back at school soon. It is now our Moulamein and surrounding NSW area students that are unable to travel to school by school bus. I hope that you all remain safe and we will continue to support you however we can. Please be aware that there are financial supports available to any families that have been impacted by flood waters. I encourage any families whose income will be affected to complete a Betty Currie Scholarship application. These have closed, however we will accept late applicants from these families.

After a few route changes, the Year 9 students were finally able to depart for their camp to Canberra on Tuesday. I look forward to hearing their experiences when they return on Friday.

Suzy Haley is to be commended for the enormous amount of work that she has had to do to support our Kerang and NSW Year 12 students in accessing exams or applying for derived exam scores. A number of these students had their exams transferred to Catherine McAuley College in Bendigo. We are grateful to Brian Turner and the staff at Catherine McAuley College for their assistance and support of our students.

We hope that all of our Year 12 families will be able to attend the Graduation Mass and Dinner, scheduled for Friday 18th November. This will be a wonderful celebration of the success of all of our Year 12 students and an event where they can finally let their hair down and relax.

Recently we have said goodbye to a number of staff. Saige Ottrey has held the position of Extra-Curricular Activities Coordinator since the beginning of the year. Saige has been amazing in the role, coordinating all of our Swimming and Athletics Carnivals, Summer and Winter Sports programs and Year 8 to 11 camps. Saige had built a wonderful rapport with the staff and students and will be missed.

Tammy Shipham has worked in a part-time role at the school for the past five years. Tammy supported the staff in the Pastoral Care Centre, as well as some time in the Learning Resource Centre. We wish Tammy well in her new administration role.

Friday 18th November will be the last day of work for Malcolm Curtis. Malcolm has been our Maintenance Officer for eleven years and is the reason our school is always clean and the roses are always amazing. Malcolm has supported staff and students over his eleven years in our community and we wish him well as he moves on to a new chapter in his life.

The Department of Health has indicated that they are seeing rising trends in presentations of COVID-19 cases across the health systems. The school has a large supply of Rapid Antigen Tests that you can collect from the Front Office. Please continue to test and if your child has symptoms, please consider keeping them at home.