School Council News 

Hi everyone,

Last month we held our School Council Annual General Meeting to close out our year and farewell retiring school councillors. This was quickly followed by our first meeting for 2021, where we welcomed three new members and elected our new office bearers. Both Kelly Verwey and Annwen Kirby said farewell as their children completed their respective times at Menzies Creek last year. Both made huge contributions to school council and specifically the Preschool and OSHC services, which I called out at the AGM and also in my last newsletter update of 2020. Thankyou again Kelly and Annwen!

One other school council retiree, who still has one more year at the school and therefore didn’t get a shout-out last year, is Florence Lindhaus. I assume most people know Florence as she lives right next to the school and is a frequent presence organising events, helping people, and walking her beautiful dog(s) around the neighbourhood. Florence has been an absolute powerhouse of school council over 5 years – driven, highly engaged, and not afraid to ruffle a few feathers to achieve the best for our community. Her work in developing and leading community events such as the winter festival, music festival and ‘regular festival’ were amazing. We loved the positivity and calmness you brought to what can be a very stressful experience, and so many people benefited from these enjoyable times. Florence has also been a machine (good band name) in chasing and getting grants, using her powers of persuasion and lobbying local politicians to bring in substantial funding to improve the school beyond what we could have achieved ourselves. This included both the staff car park (which I’ve been promised will happen Easter holidays) and the grant for the Orchard. And just as importantly, she is always prepared to have a view and to speak up, ask tough questions and make school council a more active body than it might otherwise be. Florence always approaches this in a positive manner, brings a good perspective, and support the outcome of the discussion regardless of the result. Whilst Florence is stepping down from school council, I really hope we can continue to make use of your knowledge and experience this year, especially if things stay relatively open! 

Our three new members of school council all have children in the junior school or preschool, which is great to make sure the whole school community is represented on School Council. Please join me in welcoming:

• Tracey Woodhead
• Angus McGuckian
• Sandra Beldman

After three years as president, the time was also right for me to pass on the baton, and I am delighted to congratulate Sarah Wicking as the new School Council President. Sarah has been on council for two years and already made an enormous difference, bringing her experience of working within state government and lots of energy to uplift the role of the Treasurer and Finance Committee. I’m especially thankful for this as we are swapping roles and she has made my transition back to Treasurer so much easier. Sarah has been away so she will provide these updates from next month onwards. I’d also like to congratulate Hayley Coviello on being elected as the new Vice President, and Kate Keys for continuing on as the Secretary.

We spent time at our first meeting as a group introducing ourselves and our families, why we joined school council, and what we hoped to contribute. Based on these discussions the following sub-committees were formed. We are all looking forward to another big year at Menzies Creek – hopefully a bit more normal – and it was great to get off to such a positive start with last Saturday’s well attended working bee. Thanks again for all your support and contributions to our wonderful community school – together we can all really make a difference.