Welcome to our new look newsletter! Jodi Cleaves has done a phenomenal job of coordinating this new way of receiving and producing our biggest form of communication. One of our priorities moving forward is to ensure that our school community has as many opportunities to hear about the wonderful things that are happening around our school as possible and this is a fabulous step towards this goal. If you haven’t already I strongly encourage you all to sign up to School Zine and take advantage of all our new App has to offer.

Can I just say how absolutely wonderful it is to be back. Three weeks in and I have been overwhelmed by how many opportunities are available to students here at LPS and how committed and passionate our entire staff are. Last week, on the Student Free Day, I was able to work with all staff on our planning for 2019 and I am so excited to begin to put some new systems and structures in place to ensure that our students are achieving optimum learning outcomes whilst becoming resilient and curious individuals. Over the coming weeks I will share with you some of the exciting new initiatives for 2019 as well as some of the new structures we have put in place already to support student learning.

Our Fair was a wonderful success. It was so lovely to see all of our past and present students and families attending and the weather was so very kind to us!  Today we thanked the many, many parents who gave of their time, energy and resources so willingly to achieve this event plus (many other events) and times throughout the year. Our volunteers make such a huge difference to our school and our community and if you don’t already I encourage you to contact the office to see if there is an area that you might be able to help us with. From covering library books, working in the canteen to parent help in the classroom, our school community is very well known for our collaborative and welcoming nature and it was lovely to be able to officially say thank you at our annual appreciation morning tea this morning.

Meeting with lots of parents over the past couple weeks a common theme has been access to Before School Care. Included in this issue is an Expression of Interest form for any parents who may be interested in using this service. I regularly use this service myself for my girls and understand the complexities of working full time with a family. If you think you could benefit please complete and return the form so that we can investigate whether this may work here at LPS.

Class placements are well underway and are due to be finalised by Monday next week. We will then begin the process of allocating teaching and support staff as well as physical room allocation. You can expect some changes to what this looks like in 2019 and I am very pleased to advise that in an effort to reduce class sizes next year we are moving towards a 15 class model. This will mean that our spaces will look a bit different next year. Part of these changes will be due to LPS joining the DoE Refocusing Teaching and Learning initiative. This will mean a commitment to changing our pedagogy to support play based learning and inquiry and resourcing our physical spaces to enable this.

Kind regards,

Kel Innis

Principal