School Council News

School Council Meeting Report

For the first time in a long time our school council met onsite at Warrandyte Primary School. We held our AGM and welcomed the news that Nieta Manser will continue as our ongoing Acting Principal.

In our finance report it was announced that school fee payments were down on previous years and we discussed how this may be due to the move from paper forms to the new ‘greener’ Compass platform. These fees cover vital items for our students’ success such as stationary, ICT licences, excursions and other classroom equipment. If you have forgotten to pay your fees or were not aware you needed to, please proceed with payment as soon as possible. If you need help accessing Compass or would like to pay through the office please contact Wendy or Cherise at the front desk. If you are having financial difficulty and cannot make these payments at the moment, please contact Nieta and she will work with you to make a payment plan. 

Within the payment form there is a section for volunteer contributions. This generous extra income to the school is used for additional resources and projects such as buying new books to improve  and build classroom libraries that contain a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts and authentic children’s books, rich in learning opportunities for our Literacy lessons.  That benefits all of our children so if you are in a position to make a donation to the school, we hope you choose this option. 

In Nieta’s Principal’s Report she explained that the School Improvement Team (SIT) have been working hard to develop teaching and learning processes within the school to help improve student outcomes. One example is that teachers have been participating in Learning Walks and Peer Observations, where they observe other teachers and how they are setting learning goals for their classes and how the different needs of students are being attended to within these classrooms. They have then discussed consistencies and inconsistencies across different classes and held professional development around upskilling staff and improving practice throughout the school. 

‘Correspondence in’ included a letter from WPS student, Charlie C, who has petitioned the school council to install AFL football goals on the oval. It turns out that we have portable goals already, but that we need a shed to house them down near the oval while not in use. This matter has been referred to our Building and Grounds Committee and we hope Charlie will help the school fundraise some money to purchase a shed so we can see him ‘kicking goals’. It is wonderful to see students taking the initiative to contact school council with great ideas such as this.

The Friends of Warrandyte Sub-Committee have some upcoming events to take note of, including an Easter Raffle and a hot cross bun drive. Next term fundraisers will hopefully include student discos, Mother’s Day gift making and an ‘80s Bogan Bingo’ parent night. If you would like to be involved in the FOWPS group please contact Meg Bailey on 0406 949 491.

Did you know there is a WPS song that used to be played at the end of every assembly? We had some discussion around reintroducing the singing of this song and may see it make a comeback soon. Other news includes that as we review the school policies they will be loaded onto the school website and that there will be a working bee soon to commence work on the ‘Sensory Garden’ for which we won a Landcare Grant (date TBA). We hope to see many families there.