An Update from Mrs Cosentino

Book Week 2019

We had a fun dress up day for Book Week, the students had a blast dressing up and participating in activities based on the shortlisted books. Thank you, parents for providing the students with costumes. I had the pleasure of showing our amazing school to the Assistant Director of Schools in Saudi Arabia. He was very impressed with our education system and the programs we offer the students. I mention his visit in the Book Week section of my newsletter article as he donated several dress up costumes for future Book Week activities, and made a $100 donation to our school.

Habits of Mind – Parenting Tip

Recently, staff had a training session with Karen Boyes, Habits of Mind Consultant. One of the key points about the Habits of Mind is that we need to ensure we allow children to experience failure, challenge and disappointment. I take this opportunity to remind parents that you need to be the parent, not your child's best friend at this stage in their life. Best friends can become a goal after your child has developed numerous strategies to support resilience and grit, not when they are in primary school and when they need you the most to help them build these skill sets.

City of Port Phillip Toyota Community Fund Equipment Grant

I attended the Toyota City of Port Phillip Community Awards night to receive a $1000 cheque. We thank Yen (parent of Ethan in Team Multi-Age) for writing the grant application and Rotary Melbourne South (District 9800) for being our supporter. The grant will enable the school to establish garden equipment for Passion Friday projects and the future Kitchen Garden program.

Disco Bingo

Disco Bingo was a huge success, raising $8,700 on the night. A huge thank you to Families & Friends for all their hard work in gaining donations from local businesses, organising children’s artwork and for the event on the night. Parents and staff had a fabulous time playing disco bingo. In total, Families & Friends have raised $17,591 so far this year. This is an outstanding achievement for a small school of 127 students. Well done to all members of Families & Friends for helping to build a strong sense of community engagement. I would also like to make mention of Christine Heyting (community volunteer) who baked and donated all the ingredients for the Father’s Day stall, raising $560 for Families & Friends. Thank you so much Christine.

Child Safety – Code of Conduct and Volunteers

South Melbourne Park Primary School is committed to preventing child abuse and identifying risks early, and removing and reducing these risks. We have robust recruitment practices for all staff and volunteers. Our school is committed to regularly training and educating our staff and volunteers on child abuse risks. As a community, we support and respect all children, as well as our staff and volunteers. We are committed to the cultural safety of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, the cultural safety of children from a culturally and/or linguistically diverse background, and to providing a safe environment for children with a disability. South Melbourne Park Primary School has specific policies, procedures and training in place which support our leadership team, staff and volunteers to achieve these commitments.

At South Melbourne Park Primary School:

Everyone connected to our school can help children be safe.
We have zero tolerance for any abuse of children.
We have policies and processes in place to protect the care, safety and welfare of children to ensure a zero-tolerance approach to child abuse.
There will be clear boundaries about how adults in our school community may interact with the children set out in our school’s Child Safe Code of Conduct. (Found on Compass in the School Document section).
The child safe standards apply to school staff (including volunteers and contractors), visitors and family members of students.
Keeping children safe is everyone’s responsibility. Different people at our school have different roles and responsibilities for ensuring children’s safety.
Parents should know what ‘zero tolerance’ means to us, what roles and responsibilities adults have for child safety, our procedures to respond to and report complaints of any form of child abuse.
We want to ensure that you know how we are keeping your children safe at school, and how we’d like you to support us (for families).
Staff members (including volunteers) receive training and support to understand and carry out their responsibilities under the standards.
Unsupervised contractors will be asked about their child safety arrangements as a condition of working with us, if they work with children enrolled in the school (or children can reasonably be expected to be present while they are at the school).
Other people using our school facilities will also be asked about their child safety arrangements as a condition of using our facilities, if they involve children enrolled at the school (or children can reasonably be expected to be present while their staff or other adults are at the school).

THE SIGNAL

Issue 8 · 04 Sep 2019

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