I need to start this newsletter by saying, ‘Thank you’. I need to convey this to:

Our LPS community – who have been so patient and understanding during this time. Parenting, working and teaching their children during stay-at-home-orders.
Our students – who have undertaken, at home, and in some cases, at school, their learning with responsibility.
Our staff – who have proficiently responded and risen to the challenge, ensuring that all students at LPS have access to quality units of work so their learning is not interrupted.
Our amazing executive team – who dedicated most of their last week of their break co-ordinating stages so that remote learning could be ready by Tuesday 13 July.

I am so incredibly proud of the way that our school community responds to adversity and challenge and I cannot thank everyone enough for this.

Updates to school operations

As you are aware, I wrote to you on Sunday 18 July, in response to the latest NSW Government and Health restrictions on the movement of the community. I informed you that:

Students in Greater Sydney must be learning from home unless they need to be at school. The school will be open for children of parents who are allowed to leave their home to go to work if:
- Their business is allowed to be open.
- They cannot reasonably work from home.

If your business is not open and a parent or carer is working from home, your child must be at home learning. (More information about rules for leaving home to go to work is available at Service NSW).

For the safety of the wider community there will be minimal supervision provided by staff at school. We will only be able to provide supervision for those students of families who meet the criteria above.
Further advice for families is available at Education NSW.

Learning from home will continue until Friday 30 July.

Further to this:

As the community are advised to stay at home and avoid travelling, we will no longer be able to ask families to come to the school to collect paper packs. Administration staff will be contacting families impacted to provide information about how we will provide you with your child’s work.
If you have access to the internet and you would like to loan a device from the school, please contact the office and Mrs Matthews will call you back to discuss your eligibility for this.
As teachers are working from home, they are using their personal mobile phones to contact parents, so they will block their number. If you receive a phone call from an unknown number, it will probably be us.
Parents are not to come onsite for any reason. Contact with teachers will need to be via phone or our communication platforms.
We are unable to host Education Week next week. The organising committee has been busy putting preparations together, so that we can still celebrate, lifelong learning, but in a virtual way. This unfortunately will mean that we will be unable to have the Bank of Queensland free coffee van, organised by the P&C, onsite too. We hope to reschedule this for another community event.
A few of our events are on hold at this stage. Once we have some more information, we will communicate how these will be either cancelled, rescheduled or hosted in a COVID safe way.
If your child is attending school, please wear a mask and socially distance when dropping your child off or picking them up.

Staffing update

It is with sadness that I inform you that our substantive Principal, Mrs Kerry Wood, has relinquished her position at LPS. Mrs Wood has been working with school services supporting executive staff across many schools with teacher quality and is now acting as Director, Educational Leadership for the North Wollongong Principal network area. Mrs Wood is a very experienced Principal, leading LPS for four years, before taking on other roles in the department. I thank Mrs Wood for her outstanding leadership of LPS and wish her the very best for the future. It is hoped that through the merit selection process, we will have a new substantive Principal for LPS from the beginning of 2022.

I welcome Miss Hannah Holman to the LPS staff. Miss Holman is teaching KC, after Mrs Croman left LPS due to her health. Miss Holman was successful through an Expression of Interest process of gaining the position. Miss Holman comes to LPS with substantive experience in schools in South West Sydney and knowledge in differentiation and working with EAL/D students. Mrs Donna Bates will relieve as the Assistant Principal and supervisor for Kindergarten for the remainder of the year.

I also welcome Miss Kaitlyn Pakowski to our staff. Miss Pakowski was permanently appointed through the graduate recruitment program to LPS to replace Mrs Garai’s recent transfer. Miss Pakowski will teach 1/2B for the remainder of the year, replacing Miss Blackwell, who is on maternity leave. Miss Pakowski has worked casually at LPS during 2020 and the beginning of 2021. We are lucky to have her appointed to our school.

I would also like to congratulate Miss Blackwell on the safe arrival of her daughter Sage. I wish Miss Blackwell all the best during this time and look forward to her returning to work at LPS in the future.

#proudprincipal

My first #proudprincipal celebration is Safir 1/2R. Safir, at home, has been working on practising number bonds and representing numbers in different ways. Well done Safir. You are representing numbers in many ways! 👏🏻👏🏻

My next #proudprincipal celebration is for Maryam 1/2B. Maryam has been writing, at home, informative texts. This one is about tigers. Your writing has many facts about tigers, Maryam. You have also provided labels to your picture. Awesome job! 👏🏻👏🏻

During this difficult time, I wanted to leave you with some advice and reminders.

Stay safe.

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