Dear Parents/Caregivers,
I hope you are all keeping well and safe as we continue to work through this interesting start to our school year. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all our new students and their families. We look forward to working together with you as we start your child’s learning journey at HCEPS.
LATEST COVID UPDATE INCLUDING INFORMATION ABOUT PARENTS ONSITE
Thank you to all parents/caregivers for your ongoing support of COVID restrictions throughout the first 4 weeks. Your cooperation has been appreciated and continues to help us try to minimise positive cases within the school.
We have had a very small number of positive cases where the cases have been at school during the infectious period. As per department expectations, only affected classes are notified of positive cases, so if you haven’t had any official Skoolbag notifications it means that there have been no cases to date in your child’s class.
The Department for Education has now released the next round of expectations for schools for Weeks 5-8. There have been restrictions lifted on some school based activities including excursions, incursions and some in-school extra-curricular and sporting programs, which are all now able to commence. At this stage, adults coming onsite will continue to be minimised. This means that in general, parents are still not able to come onto school grounds. Restrictions on programs that require volunteer support to be able to go ahead however, have been lifted. This means volunteer support for excursions and the canteen can resume. We are also looking at a process for management of second hand uniform sales. Volunteer support for classroom based activities such as reading or the Resource Centre are not yet able to commence.
We thank you for your continued support and understanding and will notify you if any changes to these restrictions happen before the end of Week 8.
(Please see further information about requirements of volunteering further below. Please note that this is almost a repeat of the same article sent out on Skoolbag on Wednesday with an amendment update.)
ACQUAINTANCE MEETINGS
As there are still restrictions on parents being able to access the site, Acquaintance Meetings are unable to go ahead this year. Instead, teachers are currently preparing detailed overviews that will explain what you need to know about class operations, expectations and the sorts of things that would have been discussed had it been a face-to-face meeting. These overviews will all be sent out through either Skoolbag or Class Dojo (depending on individual teachers), during Wk 6 and definitely by no later than Friday 11th March. After receiving the overview, if you have any queries about any of the information, please feel free to contact your child’s class teacher.
SCHOOL ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (AGM)
The School AGM will be held on Monday March 21st at 7:00pm.
The way that the meeting will be conducted is still to be finalised but in the meantime, please save this date!
The AGM is a very important event because it gives us an opportunity to share work from 2021 with the school community, through delivery of the Annual Report. The Governing Council for 2022 will be approved. This year there will be a number of vacancies on Governing Council and we encourage you to consider membership of this very important school committee. On Wednesday this week, I sent out more information via Skoolbag, about the role of Governing Council and how you can nominate to Governing Council. Please return nomination forms by Friday 18th March. More information about AGM will be out soon.
NEW DISABILITY BATHROOM UPGRADE
Work will shortly commence on the House 9 girls and disability toilets to add a full disability bathroom facility to the school. This area will obviously be out of bounds during construction time. After the induction meeting with the builders which is scheduled for this coming Monday, we will organise alternative toilet spaces for girls to use throughout the construction process.
NEW PLAYGROUND
Most of you are aware that the playground next to the oval is being demolished and replaced with a new more modern playground. The construction is due to commence in Wk 6 and it is planned it will be completed by the end of Wk 8. After completion we are planning to fence the new playground to decrease the possibility of vandalism.
RECOMMENCEMENT OF VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS
(REPEATED FROM WEDNESDAY’S SKOOLBAG NOTICE WITH AN AMENDMENT UPDATE)
I know that many of you have been waiting for restrictions to lift so you can begin supporting school programs through volunteering. We definitely need support for a number of programs to be able to operate successfully and gratefully welcome volunteers as the restrictions begin to lift.
Whether you are a new volunteer applicant, or a previous volunteer who would like to continue supporting the school, there are a number of steps that all volunteers must undertake before commencing volunteering in 2022.
The key expectations required from this year are that volunteers must be double vaccinated against COVID, have completed the new RRHAN training that is current for 2022 to 2024 and have a current Working with Children Check (WWCC).
The office team can help with advice on how to obtain the WWCC. The instructions for accessing RRHAN training are below. With regard to double vaccinations, evidence of the vaccinations must be sighted by school administrative personnel before volunteering can commence. If you would just like to show this evidence to either Andrea Hayden or myself, please phone the front office to organise a time when we can do this. If you are comfortable to share your evidence of this with a member of the admin team, please phone the front office to organise a way to do this.
All volunteers are asked to please wear a mask when working in the site and with students when on excursions according to staff or venue requests/requirements.
Again I sincerely thank you for continuing to consider volunteering and hope you understand the importance of the new expectations to keep everyone in the school safe.
FOR VOLUNTEERS: RESPONDING TO RISKS OF HARM, ABUSE AND NEGLECT TRAINING AND DOUBLE VACCINATION REQUIREMENTS
On July 1st 2021 a new Responding to Abuse and Neglect training was released. The new training is now called Responding to Risks of Harm, Abuse and Neglect – Education and Care. We call it RRHAN-EC for short. The Department for Education has asked that all current volunteers with the older certificates that expire on or before December 31st 2021 please undertake the new training to receive a new certificate. The new certificate expiry date will be December 31st 2024. This new certificate is required to continue volunteering in 2022. It will part of the required training for new applicants undertaking applications to become volunteers from now on.
As a volunteer, you only need to do the RRHAN-EC fundamentals course. Please use this link to book into Plink to do the course. Please then provide the school with a copy of your new certificate asap. Thank you in advance.
With regards
Anne Rathjen
Principal