New School Councillors

Following our recent call for nominations for parent members of School Council, I am happy to confirm that five parents have been elected to fill the parent Councillor vacancies.

As the number of nominations matched the number of vacancies, we have been able to confirm these appointments without the need for a ballot of all parents.

I am very happy to welcome Christina Manonian (parent of Zoe in 3/4B and Jacques in 5/6M), Kyla Davies (Arki in 5/6J), Elisa Webb (Orlo in FJ and Coen in 5/6L), Amanda Lo Cascio (Artzai in 3/4T and Marcello in 5/6J) and Kate Patterson (Lucas in 1/2P)

Many of you will know some or all of our new councillors due to their involvement at the school over a number of years and I am looking forward to the skills, experience and perspectives they will bring to our School Council

The New School Councillors will formally join Council at our next meeting on Wednesday 17th March.

Solar panels at SKiPPS

We were very excited to receive the news last week that SKiPPS has been selected to participate in the latest round of works for the Greener Government School Buildings (GGSB) program.

This means that the school will work closely with the Victorian Schools Building Authority (VSBA) to install a 29.6KW solar power system on the roof of the school buildings.

This system will allow us to generate our own electricity from the sun - making our school more environmentally friendly and also making significant reductions to our power bills each month.

The costs of the system are initially covered by the VSBA and then repaid from our utility bill savings over a period of five years.

We look forward to sharing more information about this exciting development and involving the students in the process as we begin to see the benefits from our own solar panels.

Foundation Information Evening

A reminder for our Foundation families that our Foundation Team are running an information session about the what, why and how of your child's learning this year and discover what you can do at home to support their progress.

The session will take place this Wednesday 10th March.

For COVIDsafe reasons we will be running the session twice at 4:45pm and 6pm in order to keep numbers at a level that supports social distancing and meets venue density requirements.

Families only need to attend one of these session times.In order for us to manage numbers, we ask that families make a booking at www.trybooking.com/BPJVT

School Car Park - thank you

Last newsletter I had to get grumpy and draw attention to the terrible congestion that was occurring at the start and end of each day with parents parking on footpaths, abandoning their vehicles and generally causing a dangerous situation for our students.

I wanted to thank all of the parents and carers for their efforts since then in showing patience, finding alternative places to park and for transforming things at the end of each day to make everything much calmer.

When I go out on duty at the end of each day I am no longer having to try and manage an unsafe situation and this is a great outcome for our students and families.

School Photos

Our 2021 school photos are taking place on Tuesday 30th March (the final week of term).

This year families are being asked to order their photos in a different way which we believe will make things easier as it can be done directly through Compass.

We will not be sending home the usual order and payment envelopes and instead families are asked to login to Compass prior to the 30th, place their orders and make payment directly. A how-to' guide can be found later in the newsletter.

By seamlessly linking our photo ordering with a familiar platform in Compass, we hope that this new system will make things easier.

Basketball Uniforms

Basketball is something which plays a key role in our school - from the before and after school training sessions to the Monday assembly sports results to the Friday evening games at MSAC.

For many years the Playball teams organised by parents but representing SKiPPS have provided sporting opportunities and social connections for our students.

The black basketball uniforms, rented by families from the school are an important part of this and it is great to see how proud our students are of receiving these and wearing them throughout their time at SKiPPS.

Many years ago, when families hired the basketball uniforms, it was understood that these were only to be worn during the Playball games. They were not to be worn at other times, especially to school during the school day.

There were a number of reasons for this but the main three were;

As the uniforms are rented and belong to the school we wanted to reduce wear and tear by limiting them to basketball games.
The basketball singlets do not conform to the school's sun smart policy which states that all shoulders should be fully covered.
For some students not part of a basketball team, the uniforms can appear exclusive.

Over the years, this rule has slowly been forgotten and we are now regularly seeing many students coming to school all day in their full basketball uniforms.

Whilst we do not want to take away the pride and excitement felt by these students in getting their uniforms, we are again now asking that students no longer wear them to school. If teams have an after school game, they are welcome to bring them in their school bags to change into straight after the 3:30pm bell.

School Tours for 2022

Please also refer to the Calendar on our website for further details of events