Mr Irwin's Message

Term 4 Week 8

Welcome to our second last newsletter for 2019! There’s a lot to go through, so let’s get into it!

Staff for 2020

We have a few changes afoot to our team for 2020. Over the past few weeks I have been busy leading the recruitment process for new staff. A key area we want to grow in the school next year is student engagement. Speaking with and surveying students one key issue they identified was a greater provision of specialist subjects. So next year we’ll have 4 specialist teachers on board who will provide expert curriculum knowledge in the areas of Visual arts, Performing Arts, Science and Physical Education. These will all be hour long sessions. This is an increase from this year where students have had a specialist teacher in Visual Arts, Science and a half hour session of performing arts.

This is an exciting change for students and in our final newsletter for the year I’ll be announcing our school staff for 2020, including the allocation of classroom teachers.

Year 6 Graduation

Miss Wojcik is currently working busily with grade 6 students to prepare for their graduation. By now families should have received information regarding this event including an RSVP. Because this year we are having the event externally catered for it’s important to know how many people will be attending the night in advance. If you could please return this information soon that’d be much appreciated. It promises to be a memorable night for our departing year 6 students.

Carols

In performing arts students have been practicing Christmas Carols for the Teesdale Carols on the 18th of December. The Juniors and Seniors are both practicing a separate Carol, and the senior students have worked together to write our very own Teesdale Carol. On the night there’ll be the opportunity for students who attend the evening to perform these carols, which promises to be a lot of fun!

Book Pack Fees

Last week fee and book pack information was provided to families for 2020. Receiving fees from families is an important part of our revenue to provide the variety of learning that we have, such as a Kitchen Garden program. There are once again payment dates available for families to come into and pay. Families are also able to use their BPay Biller code to pay for these online. At the beginning of the year Book packs will be delivered directly to classrooms for teachers to organise for the beginning of the school year. Book packs won’t be sent home this year however an example will be set up for parents to see on payment days.

Our expectation is for book pack fees to be paid before the school year commences and we strongly encourage families to consider voluntary contributions to ensure the viability of the range of programs we hope to provide into the future. Providing a program like the Kitchen garden program where students grow, harvest and cook their own food does require significant funding in materials, resources and predominately staffing. It’s a wonderful program we are fortunate to have which we’ve continued to expand this year by installing a green-house and aquaponics system to ensure the variety of learning students have in this program continues to develop. The contribution we ask from parents at the start of the year is invested directly to this and we are very thankful families see the value of this program and support it financially.

For any families that may experience financial hardship paying school fees please don’t ignore fees until the start of the school year. Please make an appointment to come and see me so we can discuss your circumstances and make arrangements to support you and your children at the school.

Bushfire Relief Fundraiser and Casual Dress Day

Healthy Lunch Box Choices

For more information go to: https://heas.health.vic.gov.au/schools/healthy-lunchboxes