Road and car park upgrades

As you would all know, the situation around our narrow access road and adjacent car park has been a problem for our school for some time. At peak times of drop-off and pick-up, the congestion and gridlock that occurs presents a real safety risk for our families.

We are excited to announce that the Education Department have allocated funding of over $200,000 to address this long-standing concern and these works will begin over the upcoming Easter holidays.

The plans for this work can be seen below.

Put simply, the works will widen the existing road, install speed bumps, create a 'kiss and go' drop-off zone outside the school and widen the turn out from the car park. All of these steps will work to improve traffic flow around the school and improve student safety. They are not, however, a magic bullet to fix everything overnight and we will still require parents to show patience and consider alternatives as congestion will occur at times.

The works will mean that access to the school and use of the road and car park will be limited over the Easter break and probably into the early weeks of next term. We will keep the community updated on how this will affect school operations via Konnective.

School Painting

One of the best features of our wonderful school is the amazing heritage-listed main school building, built in 1882. The story behind it is fascinating and it is of genuine statewide architectural significance.

Sadly, as you will have spotted, it has seen better days and our very limited maintenance budget is nowhere near sufficient to look after a building of such a grand age and complex design.

We are however, very excited to announce that over the upcoming holidays we will be commencing a program of repainting and repair to the exterior of the building to give it a facelift and look after the building to ensure many more generations of St Kilda children get to enjoy its unique charms. This work will take part in stages over the next few years and the first part will focus mainly on the main elevation facing the park. The work will remove the old, weathered paint from the brickwork, fill any gaps and cracks and re-paint this in the original colours.

This work is being funded from our existing school budgets and we cannot wait to see the transformation that will take place in the coming weeks.

Solar Panels

Over the last couple of years our school has commenced work to improve our environmentally-friendliness by achieving our 'Resource Smart Schools' accreditation. This work has stepped-up this year with the establishment of a 'Sustainability sub-committee' of School Council, a group of parents and staff working together through this process.

We are therefore very happy to announce that the school has been successful in applying to join the 'Greener Government School Buildings' program, run through the Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA). Joining this program will mean the VSBA provides the funding upfront to install a 29KW solar panel system at the school on the roof of the BER Building. The school will then pay this money back over a period of five year through the savings that we will make to our power bills.

Not only does this work make sense financially as we will see our electricity bills drop significantly and long-term, it will also reduce the carbon footprint of the school and is a great stepping stone to us becoming a fully-fledged 'Resource Smart' school.

We hope that work to install the panels will take place early in term 2.

End of term arrangements

It seems ridiculous that we are talking about the end of term already but Easter is almost upon us and we finish Term 1 next Thursday (1st April).

This day is also our school athletics day, taking place on the 'school' oval with students in F-2 participating in athletic events from 9:00am - 10:40am and our Year 3-6 students from 9:00am - 1:00pm. During the day, groups will rotate around a series of activities to compete against their classmates.

As the event will be taking place outdoors with plenty of space to socially distance, we are glad to announce that parents are invited and very welcome to attend to support your child.

As it is the final day of term, school will finish at 2:30pm - please make arrangements for your child to be collected at this time or make a booking with TheirCare.

Foundation Parents Working Bee

After we were unable to hold any working bees during 2020 due to COVID, our Buildings and Grounds sub-committee are excited to announce this Saturday (27th March) is a working bee for our Foundation families.

As a bit of a change in 2021 and to try and better engage families, this year we will hold a working bee each term (one for each age level at the school). this will look as follows;

Term 1 - Foundation parents and carers
Term 2 - Year 1/2 parents and carers
Term 3 - Year 3/4 parents and carers
Term 4 - Year 5/6 parents and carers

As well as completing a lot of important jobs to make our school buildings and grounds look and work better, these events will be social occasions to help you connect with families in your child's year level and will finish with a sausage sizzle for parents and children.

This Saturday we will be challenging the Foundation families to paint our new sports shed, tidy up the sandpit and complete some gardening tasks. We hope to see all of them here!

Parents' Footy Team

After an enforced absence in 2020, once again our parents' footy team will be taking part in the Bayside competition against dads and mums from our local schools in early September.

The competition began back in 2013 as a one-off game between the dads (and occasional mum) from St Kilda Park and Port Melbourne Primary School. Since then it has grown to also include over ten other schools and is a great day out at Murphy's Reserve in Port Melbourne.

If there are any parents keen to pull on the red, white and black and represent SKiPPS (and to meet some other parents) then please email our Team manger Ed Waters at EW@tangoprojects.com.au to find out about upcoming training sessions.

Order SUSHI for Term 2 Now!