Dear Parents and Carers,
It is wonderful to have almost everyone back at school.
We continue to keep those families in extended quarantine and those unwell in our thoughts and prayers.
I wish to thank all of you for supporting the safe transition back to school for our children.
I thought it timely, to let you know and understand the various COVID safe practices that we are implementing at school.
CECV (Catholic Education Commission of Victoria) School Operation Guide
Since Covid 19 appeared in Victoria in 2020, the CECV have provided ongoing and regular updated School Operation Guides. So far during 2021, we have received 30 COVID safe updates based on the Victorian Chief Health Officer's advice.
The principles for maintaining a COVIDSafe school apply to all Victorian Catholic schools.
At St Patrick's we continue to follow the COVIDSafe principles for on-site supervision. Overtime these have included constant reminders to the children about COVID Safety practices including hand sanitiser in all learning spaces and areas of the school. Last year we employed an extra day time cleaner to go around the school cleaning and sanitising high touch surfaces. We increased the hours for our evening cleaners too and maintained these safety practices this year.
From 28th July, the most recent School Operations Guide recommends the following combination of strategies to minimise transmission risk in response to the transmission of the Delta strain amongst children. Here are some of the many practices we are actioning:
Class Bubbles
Class bubbles are to be created by grouping students together and limiting mixing between different groups of students. This works to limit the number of students potentially identified as close contacts in the event of an exposure at a school.
Action at St Patrick's: Year levels are not mixing together. Year levels have been allocated to separate areas of the playground. These areas will be rotated every week.
Fresh Air Flow into Indoor Spaces
Schools are strongly encouraged to increase air flow into indoor spaces wherever possible.
Action at St Patrick's:
Doors and windows are kept open to keep air circulating and avoid the need to close and open doors.
Visitors to School
Non- essential visitors should be excluded from school sites for this period.
Action at St Patrick's:
Only health and wellbeing staff are permitted onsite in order to support our most vulnerable children.
All other visitors and support staff (for example, Public Speaking lessons) are supporting children online.
Non essential meetings, gatherings, events and assemblies
Large school gatherings (assemblies) are not permitted at this time.
Action at St Patrick's:
Weekly assemblies are being held via Zoom
Outside School Hours Care programs (OSHC) Team Kids
OSHC programmes can recommence following operational guidance as appropriate.
Action at St Patrick's:
Team Kids has returned to door bell entry procedures.
Please ring the doorbell and the Team Kids educators will respond.
Parents are not to come onsite.
Team Kids has a Covid checklist which they adhere to each day.
Mental Health and Wellbeing of Students
The mental health and wellbeing of students remains an important consideration.
The
Mental health toolkit has advice and resources to support student mental health and wellbeing. This includes advice on positive mental health promotion, curriculum support, how to identify and access support, as well as parent- and student-specific pages.
Action at St Patrick's:
Our quarantine experience has affected every child, every family and every staff member in different ways. We need to recognise this and encourage families to seek our help as required.
Our staff are working together with parents to address the diverse and unique needs of all children.
if you request support for your children.
The above mentioned actions are only a few of the actions we are implementing to ensure we keep our children safe during this challenging time.
The health and wellbeing of our whole community is at the forefront of our minds.
Again, I wish to share my appreciation for the positive feedback from our community in relation to the challenges we experienced together during the past weeks.
As one parent mentioned to me during our quarantine period, we will be stronger for the experience.
Please continue to keep in touch and email or telephone me
principal@spmurrumbeena.catholic.edu.au with any questions or queries. Your questions are important. The sooner we can allay any concerns or worries for you, we can allay similar concerns for others in our community.
Stay safe and well,
Jenny Hawkins
Principal.
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