Earlier this term, we advised parents and carers of an intended variation of student attendance for the first Friday of Term 4. Our teachers were going to be taking part in a special professional development opportunity in conjunction with three other schools in town. Unfortunately due to Covid restrictions, this event is unable to go ahead as planned. This means that students will attend as per normal in Term 4. The first day of student attendance for Term 4 is Monday, 12th October and the last day is Wednesday, 16th December. 

We apologise for any inconvenience this change may cause.

I have recently been in discussion with the Department of Education to investigate further the potential for an Out of School Hours Care (OSHC) service to be established at Orange East PS. Over the years, parents and carers have often indicated interest in such a service and a previous internal school survey has also indicated interest.

The next step is for interested parents/carers to complete an official DOE survey (link below), the results of which are then evaluated to decide on the viability of a service. If viability is established and a suitable space is approved, the next step is to advertise for tenders to run the service.

If you would likely utilise an OSHC service at the school, please complete the the short survey by following the link below. The cut-off date for survey responses is Friday, 25th September.

Please note: the OSHC service would not be provided by OEPS staff and would be unlikely to commence until Term 1, 2021.

SURVEY LINK

This Term, our school will be participating in the Partners in Learning parent survey, another part of the Tell Them From Me suite of surveys (student, teacher and parent surveys) on student engagement. The survey asks parents and carers questions about different factors that are known to impact on student wellbeing and engagement.

Running this survey will help our school understand parents’ and carers’ perspectives on their child’s experience at school. These include: communication between parents/carers and staff, activities and practices at home and parent/carer views on the school's support of learning and behaviour. This valuable feedback will help our school make practical improvements. 

The survey is conducted entirely online on smartphones, ipads, tablets, laptops or computers. The survey will typically take 15 minutes or less to complete and is completely confidential. The parent survey will be open between 9 September and 23 October. Although participating in the survey is entirely voluntary, your responses are very much appreciated. The survey is available in 23 languages.

More information about the survey is available at: http://surveys.cese.nsw.gov.au.

To access the survey for our school go to:

http://nsw.tellthemfromme.com/vjzj2​

All new OEPS logo uniforms are now available to purchase through quickcliq.

Anyone who is already doing canteen orders will see a new tab at the top called uniforms. Any item purchased can either be collected by the parent or handed to the child. We will be completing orders on a Tuesday and/or Thursday. 

On occasion, the school is informed by community members of students moving to and from school in an unsafe way. While we love to see students being active and walking or riding to/from school where it is possible, we need to work together as a community to ensure that our children understand and have the road-sense skills required to make this a safe activity. For this reason, over the next couple of months I will be sharing useful resources via the newsletter to encourage families to have important road safety discussions. The following website also has some very useful information and further links.

https://roadsafety.transport.nsw.gov.au/stayingsafe/children/index.html

We urge parents and carers to keep child/ren at home if they are feeling unwell, particularly if they have a cold, fever, cough, sore throat, any respiratory illness or flu-like symptoms. We are excited to have our child/ren back at school but we also have a priority to ensure our staff and students are kept healthy and safe. Also, if your child/ren arrive at school unwell or fall ill during the day, the office staff will call you to pick the child/ren up as soon as possible. 

The procedures are in place to protect the wellbeing of all members of the school community and remain of critical importance.

OEPS Quaran-Cook Book

One thing we all learned about lock-down was that everyone seemed to develop a new-found love of cooking. We thought that this would be a great time to capitalise on all of the masterchefs out there and create the OEPS Quran-Cook Book, a wonderful momento of a very interesting year!

The idea is simple – send us your best recipes with collection starting last term. Recipes MUST be handwritten or typed (not a photocopied page out of Jaime Oliver’s latest). Recipes should be emailed to: orangeeastpublicschool-Fund@pandcaffiliate.org.au, handed into the school office or can be entered directly into the Google Form (link below). You can send more than one recipe and we will make every effort to ensure as many as possible are included – however please be aware that in some instances some submissions may not be included (double-ups, too many in one category, etc). We will post regular updates about the number of recipes received in each category, which may help decision making around your submission.

Recipe categories include: Desserts/Cakes, One Pot Wonders, Quick Meals (10 minutes or less), Free Foods (GF, sugar free, allergy free, dairy free, etc), Slow Cooker or Fancy Foods.

Google Form Link - https://forms.gle/HVJ1MXQQUyVWnqmE9

For inclusion in the book, recipes must be sent by the end of September. Recipes should include an ingredients list and cooking method. We are hoping to sell the cook book at approximately $15 – pending final production costs.

Clothing Pool

Please be aware that the Clothing Pool is open every Thursday from 8:40 - 9:10am and again from 2:30 - 3:10pm in the afternoon.

A reminder to please ensure that you observe correct social distancing, including sanitation of hands and cough/sneeze etiquette.

Next Meeting

Meetings are held on the third Tuesday of each month during school term starting at 6:30pm. At the moment due to Covid restrictions meetings are being held via Zoom video conference.

The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, 15th September starting at 6:30pm.