principal's message

improvements to communications

The school office and school council have made a commitment to improve the lines of communication between school and home. We thank the Communications Working Party for your early engagement and helpful feedback, which has already shown us some great ways we can improve the quality of communication that families are receiving. Wendy and I will be trialling some new approaches to the newsletter (you might notice some shorter paragraphs) and would love any feedback!

school council elections

As I mentioned in my last newsletter article, our annual school council nomination and election process will be starting shortly. Our School Council is instrumental in many processes across school, especially around governance, community engagement and school improvement initiatives. You can find more information about the school council elections, including a timeline through the PDF below.

jsc

Nominations for our JSC (Junior School Council) closed today and it has been a real joy to see and hear the conversations about what it means to be a student representative on our JSC. Just as our school council is an integral part of our school community, our active JSC provides a voice to our student body in the continuous improvement of BNW.

In past years, Andrew Lang (art teacher and Big Cheese) has led our student board in some wonderful endeavours, including but not limited to presenting at School Council, running talent quests for all students across the school, consulting with our architects and engaging in an equity project for our school last year. This year, Jenny Wheatcroft (Senior School) and Nadia McComb (Indonesian) will be taking the helm and they are already discussing leadership training and a conference for the 3-6 reps to attend in March.

With student voice being an ongoing priority at BNW, we are excited to see what JSC will achieve this year.

family payments

Next week, families will receive their 2020 school fees, which have an increase of $40 from last year. Our School Council has increased school fees for the 2020 school year. After an extensive investigation by the Finance Committee, the parent payment charges consider cost of living increases and provide funding for a wide range of school items and services in support of your child’s ongoing learning, whilst staying significantly below the fees of other schools in our local area. A description of how family payments are used by schools was sent home with students as part of the annual consent form pack last week and further information on this year’s fees and payment options will be attached to your fees next week.

school building fund

When you receive your school fees next week, the information that comes with the fees will talk about our school’s building fund. When paying annual school fees, some families opt to make a donation to our School Building Fund, which raises funds to build new facilities and maintain our current facilities. Some of the building works projects we have locally funded in the past two years include:

Upgrading the key system across our school to improve security for students and property;

Renovating the sickbay and staffroom, including the installation of a ‘breakout space’ in the main building;

Installing phones into each classroom to provide better communication for staff and improve privacy concerns with announcements;

Installing LED lights in the main building, to significantly improve the light quality for students and reduce energy use;

Upgrading the ceiling fans in all classrooms of the main building to reduce the top-temperatures experienced in our classrooms;

Upgrading the outdoor furniture and kitchen equipment in Sprout;

Purchasing the new Gaga Pit panels (still to be installed).

Recent Capital Works funding will allow us to build new classes and educational spaces, while locally raised funds will be used to cover smaller projects, similar to those listed above, such as replacing carpet where required and building outdoor classroom facilities.

Any donations over $2.00 made to our School Building Fund will receive a receipt, as these donations are tax deductible.

building works webpage

In my last newsletter article, I mentioned a new webpage that is being designed, which will list the expected timeline for our project and we will copy all updates on building works into the one space, for our community to reference. The host of our school website has had some technical difficulties, however the content of the site is ready to go and we expect the page to be live early next week. We will let you know once this has happened. In the meantime, there is an update on the building works in ‘School Life’.