From The Principal

Dear parents, guardians, and members of the Heathmont Community, 

We are now well and truly on the downhill run for term one with only three more weeks to go until the Easter holiday break. A lot has happened this term and a lot has been achieved by both students and staff alike. We also have a number of things coming up that are quite exciting and should provide lots of opportunities for students. 

New stadium handover

The new stadium will be handed over to the school to access this week. Work will still continue on the grounds and landscaping around the stadium but students will be able to access the building through the school access points. We will be able to start using this facility as of late this week. There will be an official opening / launch event later in the term and I will let you know of further details regarding this as they are provided to me. 

Discussions about the next stage of the building works have also begun with the VSBA and the architects developing schematics to demonstrate what might be possible for the next part of our build. I can’t say much definitively at this point, but I think that it is looking good for the performing arts space right now. 

Principal’s Advisory Group

Our first PAG meeting was held this week with several students from across all year levels meeting with me to discuss areas in which they would like to see the school improve. It was a very productive and positive meeting where we were able to identify a range of areas for improvement that included looking at the school environment (buildings and grounds), the classroom environment (teaching and learning) and school program (subjects and programs) to identify what is working well and where improvement is needed. 

There have been a couple of areas identified by students as requiring attention that directly affect school operations. These include the locker bay areas, the school yard and rubbish, and the state of the toilets. All these things are impacted by both administrative (school based) and behavioural (student based) factors which makes strategies to improve them not just possible but relatively easy to identify and implement. 

In the area of the locker bays, we are looking to restructure these over the school holiday period to provide more space in them and to spread lockers out across the school a little more. This will help to reduce congestion in these bays at peak times, allow students to access them more easily and, hence, lock their lockers more easily and prevent the build up of rubbish and mess. It will also make it a lot easier for the school to monitor the locker bays and identify students who are deliberately damaging the school lockers. Several students reported that there are students who regularly and deliberately break off locker doors and locks and this will need to stop. There will be further details provided about this process prior to the end of term. 

Rubbish in the school yard is an issue in almost every school and Heathmont College is no exception. This issue is multi-faceted with the cause being the dropping of rubbish by students in the yard (incidentally it seems that our students eat an awful lot of potato chips with chip wrappers being one of the most commonly seen articles of rubbish!), and compounded by insufficient bins or non-optimal bin locations. We are looking into purchasing more bins and identifying ideal locations for them but we will also need students to be better at putting their own rubbish in the bins and picking up more of their rubbish. Our daily student monitors are also doing their bit with regular yard clean up included in their duties. 

As for the issue of the toilet blocks...... This also is multi-faceted with concerns raised around the toilet blocks themselves but also around the way in which these are treated by students. With the opening of the new stadium, we will have a new set of toilets to open to students. This will likely mean closing one of the existing blocks to ensure that it stays within our cleaning allocation. The new toilet and change room areas of the stadium will remain open as long as they are kept clean. 

School drop off and pick up

By and large, our school drop off and pick up times appear to run relatively smoothly however, there are a few things to be aware of, particularly as the college grows in numbers as while we have building works occurring. 

The mornings mostly work well with students arriving at various times across the morning and via a range of methods. The afternoons, however, can get a little congested with everyone leaving at once. We have attempted to manage this by staggering the finish times for year 7 students, but this is really only a short term strategy. We are seeing some concerning practices of students being picked up in cars that have entered the school car park and then exit the same car park through the gap between the waiting buses. 

This practice is potentially quite dangerous and poses a significant risk to student safety. 

We are currently looking at ways in which we can restructure the current traffic arrangements along the Waters Grove front of the school but in the short term, we are asking parents who pick up students at the end of the day to aim to pull up along either Marlborough Road or one of the other nearby streets. Please avoid coming into the school car park and then exiting in between the buses. 

New uniform rollout 

Earlier this term, I sent out a compass reminder about the rollout of the new uniform. Unfortunately, it would seem that the communication around this has been a little conflicting although the School Council has had a clear mandate on this from the beginning. This lapse in communication is likely due to the change in leadership at the college since the new uniform was initiated.

Conflicting communication has, however, led to families purchasing uniform to last until the end of 2021 and not 2020. The school planner / diary also stipulates that students in years 8 – 12 are able to wear the old version of the uniform until the end of 2021. Given this, the college will continue to accept the old uniform items until the end of 2021 although none of the older items will be available for purchase from the uniform suppliers. 

Having said this, I have noticed that we have seen an increase in students not wearing correct uniform of late – particularly in the middle school / senior area of the college. Breaches of the college uniform will be a focus for house leaders and mentor group teachers over the coming weeks and the expectation is that all students are wearing uniform every day. Students who are unable or unwilling to follow the college policy around this will be issued consequences and contact with family will be made when breaches are significant and repeated. Please ensure that your child / children have all of the required uniform and if you need support with this, please contact us so that we can develop a plan to ensure that all students are able to attend school in full school uniform. 

Parent teacher interviews

Bookings will be open for parent teacher interviews on Monday 15 March, with progress reports due out at the end of this week. The parent teacher interviews will be held on Friday 26 March and student will not be required to attend school but will be expected to attend interviews with their parents. Due to the success of WebEx interviews held in 2020, we are choosing to continue with this option for 2021. We found that more families were able to access the WebEx interviews than the face to face ones and this was far less disruptive for families. The WebEx format was also much easier for teachers to ensure that the interview times remained on track across the entire evening. 

Further information regarding parent teacher interviews will be communicated through the Compass platform in the coming days.