Principal

Aaron Cox

Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to our school community members. We are certainly in exciting times and with the construction of our gymnasium commencing, we have needed to be flexible and introduce new timetables to allow children to run around our available spaces safely. After a week, it seems the upper school students and teachers love their new timetable with 2 hours, followed by another 2 hours and then 1 hour of dedicated learning blocks throughout the day. In a previous life, I too worked these hours and Ioved it! I think we might be on to something that will benefit our children, but we will need to gather further evidence moving forward. 

Before we know it, we will be at the end of the year, and we are excited about what lies between now and then. Our major school event for 2022 is a colour fun run. Its focus is to raise money for our therapy dog ‘Leo’ who will be starting with us shortly as a new staff member. We are celebrating the colour run by having staff members from each team being blasted on Monday afternoon. This should be a hoot for the kids to get some payback on their teachers. I am having morning tea events with a select group of junior and senior students who have raised at least $100 by next Monday. I am looking forward to that.

By the time of print for this newsletter, the Victorian Schools Building Authority (VSBA) will have released their first communication to our whole community. I encourage you to share this letter with all people in Dingley. I have stated repeatedly that the school, your School Council and some passionate parents have been working for months in the background to improve the scope of the project because first and foremost, ‘we are here for the students’. 

That dedication has paid off, to a certain extent, with the Victorian Government and the Victorian Schools Building Authority providing an additional $1.29 million to improve our scope of works. This means we will have a total of approximately $8.2 million to deliver something that we would consider as a functional asset to the school and the broader Dingley community. I cannot stress my level of gratitude for the work put in by parents to bring about this positive outcome. 

Until we hear from the builder and further negotiations occur, we are not sure how far this money will stretch, but we remain optimistic that commonsense will prevail and our children will be the beneficiaries.

Finally, just a reminder to have a look in our garden to see the installation of the new garden beds. Over the coming months they will be prepared to support our Stephanie Alexander Kitchen program.