It is more than pleasing as Principal to be able to share with our greater community that our students have returned to learning after the holidays in a most impressive manner. All of them are showing respect to our DECYP values of Connection, Courage, Growth, Respect and Responsibility and our School Expectations of doing our best, being positive learners, acting safely and respectfully and being respectful and caring.

The upcoming week will certainly be an exciting one with Wednesday 15 May being our Cross Country Carnival. The Carnival will begin at 1: 45pm and we encourage as many families and carers to come along and cheer our students on as they aim to complete as many laps of the walking track as possible within a 20-minute timeframe. As per the letter sent our earlier, each class will have a given starting point and spectators are asked to gather at these points. Additionally, to encourage greater belonging to Pine and Wattle, students are encouraged to wear their house colours for the entirety of Carnival Day.

Our School Association has recently met and raised concerns around the safety of students at pick up and drop off times. We ask all parents/carers to help us keep everyone safe at these times by:

• reverse parking in the parking lot
• it is unsafe and illegal to overtake another car at a pedestrian crossing. So, NEVER overtake another vehicle at the pedestrian crossing (even if the car is waiting to turn into the drop off/pick up circle area).
• if you child is in Grade 4-6 please encourage them to walk to Old Surrey Road for pick (this is to try and lower the amount of traffic in the turning circle and car park).
• when leaving the car park or the drop off/pick up circle, please turn left onto O’Grady Street.

On a celebratory note, we have collected some positive data from our PAT Early Years testing that was completed during Term 1:

• in Year 1, 100% of our students are at PAT standard (in 2023 only 84% of these same students achieved this result)
• 45% of our students achieved medium growth
• 55% of our students achieved high growth.

This data is evidence that we are making positive steps towards our school improvement goal of more than 77.3% students meeting the PAT standard and less than 24% of students achieving low growth. Thus saying, I would like to publicly recognise and thank Mrs Marlene Gleeson for the learning she has undertaken, the determination she has shown to implement this learning into her teaching and her consistent monitoring of student progress to best support our students. You must agree, Mrs Gleeson and her cohort of students have certainly worked hard to demonstrate such outstanding growth.

There were many pleased tummies early this week, with our wonderful parent group again coming up with the goods and supplying our students and staff with a warming delight – Pumpkin Soup. Soupa Monday is much looked forward to by everyone and with the colder weather approaching it is more than appreciated. Thank you.

We have some students wishing to organise a Remember Billy Carts Day. They are hoping to hold an event in December and are seeking support for this event. If you have access to a Billy Cart and would be willing to bring it in for the Billy Cart Grand Parade in December, please let the front office know.

Finally, a reminder that our Student Representative Council are currently collecting clean second-hand kids coats with working zips and empty pockets for Tassie Mums to pass on to vulnerable Tasmanian children. If you have a coat to donate, they are being collected by the SRC every morning in the Year 5/6 classroom.