At our recent Governing Council meeting, we were very lucky to have a wonderful student presentation from Cooper & Jess, year 2 students from Mrs. Luke’s room 18 class. The students very confidently shared with us their wonderful book reviews of the book “The Cow Jumped Over the Moon.” As part of book week, we encourage you to write a book review with your child for the library blog!

Education Director Christine Hatzi, came along to our meeting and we had a great discussion with our entire Governing Council about the upcoming process for hiring our new Principal, and about the goals and priorities of our school as we enter into this process. Of course, our Governing Council will be very sad to say goodbye to Brian Marshall, however, we wish him all the best in his retirement and are very thankful to him for the legacy he leaves at our school.

We also had an extensive discussion about traffic and safety around our school. We have formed a committee to focus on this as a priority for our school, and they will continue to work with Marion Council and Way-2-Go to look at how we can improve traffic and safety around our school. There have been some troubling displays of poor judgement and disregard for safety in the streets around our school, so we implore all parents to please remember:

  • there is NO PICK UP ZONE on Edward Beck drive in the afternoon; this area is regular street parking, and must be treated as such.
  • do not double park or pull up alongside parked cars to drop off or pick up your children; this is very, very unsafe and we do not want an accident to happen!
  • use the marked crossings to cross the street… let’s do the right thing and demonstrate by example the right thing to the children of our community.
  • do not make UTurns on the streets around our school… again it is very unsafe, and we must have the safety of all our children as a top priority.

As always, there are so many wonderful things going on at our school, including our upcoming Science Week in Week 1, Term 1.  Will you be joining in with your family for the Science Expo? Our family will be working on something to display at the Science Expo over the school holidays, and I am definitely looking forward to all of the events that will be taking place during Science Week.

Our Parent Network has a few things coming up for the families of Woodend as well, including a Car Boot Sale, a Parent’s Bingo Night, and the Kay-a-day Challenge with a focus on healthy activity and lifestyle… so please look to the blog for more information coming soon on those things!

The Woodend Café will be open once again, on the last Friday of the month, September 30th from 9 am in the school kitchen. It’s a great time to pop in for a cold juice or a hot beverage and connect with some of the other families of our school (an your younger children are absolutely welcome as well).

Would love to see you then!

Karen Gunton

Governing Council