Principal's Piece

Dear Parents and Carers 

I have been delighted by several students visiting my office over the past week to show off their good work. It is such a joy to see them come in beaming with pride over what they have learnt. Their smiles grow even wider when I tell them how proud I am of them and these smiles get even bigger—if that’s possible—when they get to pick their own sticker! It is wonderful to have students coming to school every day ready to learn and willing to put in the hard work to achieve this.

As you may have heard the 25m pool at the Leisure Centre will be closed indefinitely, which is very sad for the whole town but also because our swimming program was going so well. The swimming teachers would like to squeeze in one more lesson this week to focus on pool safety and then we will have to cancel the rest of the lessons planned for this term. We hope the pool is fixed by Term 4 so we can resume the swimming program at the end of the year.

St Patrick’s Quiz Night will be a night to remember this year, judging by the calibre of prizes being donated. Thank you to the businesses in this town for your enormous generosity. Tickets can be purchased from the school office or over the phone from Monday to Friday 7:30am to 3:30pm. We will have another Quiz Night planning meeting this Friday at school at 2:30pm if anyone would like to help out.

The School Board and I reviewed the 2021 Canteen menu at our Board meeting this month. We looked at our prices and compared these with canteen menus over the last few years as well as with similar businesses around town. As a result, there will be a small increase in the cost of some items. We also decided that, in line with the school's efforts to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly, we will phase out sales of bottled water. There are cold water fountains available for students and each class has spare water bottles for students who do not bring one from home.

Just a reminder we are closed for PD next Monday and Tuesday, 15th and 16th of March. OSHC will operate as per its normal hours of 2 to 5pm.

This week we have had to remind students that school needs to be a safe place for everyone. Students can help keep our school a safe place by keeping their hands and feet to themselves and using their words to solve problems. Fighting at school is not acceptable behaviour and will not be tolerated. We ask all families to work with us to remind students that it is never okay to solve a problem with violence and that there is always an adult they can turn to for help.

We are implementing the Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum (KS:CPC) which is an evidence-based child safety curriculum that teaches children to recognise abuse, tell a trusted adult, understand what is appropriate and inappropriate touching and ways of keeping themselves safe. The KS:CPC fits primarily within the Health and Physical Education learning area of the Australian Curriculum but is also taught across multiple learning areas. At our school it will be taught by the Classroom teacher. The curriculum is based on two main themes:

· We all have the right to be safe

· We can help ourselves to be safe by talking to people we trust.

These themes are presented through four Focus Areas:

1. The right to be safe

2.  Relationships

3.  Recognising and reporting abuse

4.  Protective strategies

We will share further information with you about this program as the year goes on.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Miss Gabby

Principal 

COVID Update - Unwell Children

Students who are unwell should stay home. Parents are asked to seek medical advice if their child exhibits symptoms of COVID-19. Normal processes for advising the school of a child’s absence will apply.

See the CEWA Website for further information: https://covid19.cewa.edu.au/covid-19-response-210207/