A message from the Principal

As you would be aware from our recent Compass communications, the issue of student and community safety has been at the forefront of our minds this week due to a couple of incidents. 

• On Friday of last week, an adult entered the school grounds and walked into a Year 3/4 classroom where students were learning. He appeared to be unsure where he was. Our staff followed our procedures for such incidents and the students were quickly evacuated from the space by their teachers to a separate building. School leadership were alerted and we escorted the intruder from the school grounds. Police were called and the Education Department was notified.

• Yesterday (Tuesday), Just before 9am, crossing Fitzroy Street on their way to school, a family was approached and physically attacked by a stranger without any warning or provocation.

Being located in such a vibrant spot, on Fitzroy Street and in the heart of St Kilda brings many wonderful attractions, opportunities and events to our doorstep. It does however mean that, from time to time, we need to deal with the negative side of our suburb and this confronting and antisocial behaviour which appears to be happening more often.

It is worth noting that thankfully such incidents remain very rare. Since arriving at SKiPPS in 2010, I cannot recall an event involving a stranger coming into the school during class time in this way. Similarly, whilst confrontations and physical incidents outside of the school grounds are sadly slightly more common for our families, they are also rare.

This being said, we have spent this week working with families, the Education Department and external experts to review our operations in order to allow us to help all members of our school community feel safer at school.

As an immediate step, you will have noticed that all external gates are now closed after drop-off in the mornings. We are also ensuring that external classroom doors are closed and locked where possible. 

We have also met with API, a leading security company to discuss longer-term options for improving site security to reduce the risk of a similar incident happening in future. They will be conducting a full site audit and we will explore options including additional fences, signage, electronically controlled security gates, intercoms and cameras.

Whilst we value our school being an open, welcoming and community-centred place for all, we recognise that we need to balance this with also being a safe place for our students. We will keep you updated with developments and decisions to ensure that we get this balance correct.

Against this context of increased community safety concerns, our School Council remains very concerned and completely opposed to the plan by the City of Port Phillip Council to construct a new public toilet facility outside our school. We believe that if these toilets are built so close to the school, the anti-social behaviour that such facilities invariably attract will pose a further risk to community safety.

Later in this newsletter, there is an update on our work to challenge this unsafe decision, including a request for all of our community to help out. We need the support of all of our parents and carers to engage with this campaign and send a loud and clear message to CoPP Council that they need to reconsider this risky and inappropriate development.

I encourage you to get involved with this work and send a really clear message to the decision-makers behind this terrible idea.

Neil Scott

Principal