Dear parents/caregivers,

This week has really tested our students and staff due to the extreme heat and humidity.  No doubt you too have been waiting for the weather to change and home air-conditioners would have struggled to beat the heat.

Our Resource Centre has been without air-conditioning all week due to a burnt out bearing.  This has been on order and is being repaired as soon as it arrives. The actual unit is only about eight years old but gets an incredible amount of use.  This included effecting the Kitchen area.

The Canteen air-conditioning unit stopped working due to the heat and humidity and required a service technician to come and get it operating again.

Two classrooms had new air-conditioners installed to replace non-working units.  Unfortunately it coincided with Thursday’s heat, but we moved the classes to areas that were air-conditioned.  In some cases we moved children from evaporative cooled areas to classrooms that had refrigerated air when those rooms were free, as well as using our studio which has refrigerated air.

The Atrium and the classrooms leading off that space have evaporative air-conditioning that usually performs okay but could not handle the last few days. This was not helped by having one of the roof top evaporative units with one side having been removed (possibly by vandals at some time over the last few months) and then subsequently having 41 degree heat being pumped into the administration and atrium area.  I did not envy the person who spent quite some time on the roof putting it all back together again.

Students were not permitted out at lunchtime on Thursday as per our Extreme Weather Policy.

Over the last three days we have had a constant flow of technical service people from air-conditioning companies working on different parts of the school. Today was 32.7 degrees at lunchtime (measured at Noarlunga), even though it felt hotter due to the humidity. Monday’s forecast is for 25 degrees so we will all be much more comfortable.  I do need to say that I have been very pleased with how our students (and staff) have managed these few days.

Kind regards,

Steve Freeman
Principal