eNews #9   Years 3 - 6 Return to School                                                        4 June

With Week 8 of LFH drawing to a close, we are looking forward to welcoming the whole school back on Tuesday 9 June. It has still been relatively quiet here, but we are delighted that will change from Tuesday.

In the last two weeks, we’ve successfully tried to teach our Prep - Year 2 students to be as independent as possible as they enter and exit the school. Thank you to all those parents who’ve helped ensure that smooth transition as their children ‘crossed the line’ into school each morning without mum, dad or their siblings.

From next week, we have kept the same times and similar organisation, based on parent and staff feedback that this has worked well. Additionally, two extra exit points will be opened, particularly to cater for more than double the number of students.

Parents: the following detailed information is critical to the safety of everyone during pick up and drop off, not only for your children, but also for the many adults expected at the school. If you didn’t read eNews #6, which contained the reasoning for Prep - Year 2 arrangements, please revisit that information.

Staggered start and finish: some important safety reminders

• Please remember to maintain social distancing between adults.
• Parents need to avoid or minimise time around the school grounds, to limit adults congregating. 
• Families will need to plan for and adapt to altered arrangements to arrive at specified times. Please keep to your allocated times, which will maximise the ease of drop off/pick up.
• Please observe the signage we have placed in pick up/drop off areas to remind staff, students and families of the need for changed behaviours. This includes where parents should wait or walk.

The following Drop off and Pick up arrangements will start on Tuesday 9 June:

• Students with surnames A - L can attend school between 8.45 a.m. and 2.55 p.m. (last group leaves).
• Students with surnames M - Z can attend school between 9.10 a.m. and 3.20 p.m. (last group leaves).

Please ensure your child/children arrive at the above times for their group. If you are sharing pick up/drop off with another family from a different group, please contact the teacher/s involved via their Sentral mailbox and they will let you know the best way to manage this.

By 9:30 a.m., we anticipate every student attending will be in class and ready to learn, with the roll being marked then and the Pakenham St and Blacks Walk gates locked. Only the main Janet St gate will be unlocked during the day, as usual.

Arrangements for Drop off

As all class teachers will be in their classrooms from 8:45 a.m., we really need parents’ cooperation. Please keep to your ‘group times’.

Students with surnames A - L should be dropped off at school between 8:45 and 9:00 a.m., via the Janet St, Blacks Walk or Pakenham St entrance. Unfortunately, parents cannot enter the school grounds and must socially distance.
Students will go straight to their classrooms, unless dropping mobile phones at the office. The DET Students Using Mobile Phones Policy remains in place. Students will then stay inside with their class teacher while remaining staff supervise the next arrivals outside in the playground. There is no ‘before school’ play outside.

Students who are attending OSHClub will join their classes as usual by 8:50 a.m.

Students with surnames M - Z should be dropped off at school between 9:05 and 9:20 a.m., via the Janet St, Blacks Walk or Pakenham St entrance.  Unfortunately, parents cannot enter the school grounds and must socially distance.
Students will also go straight to their classrooms unless dropping mobile phones at the office. The DET Students Using Mobile Phones Policy remains in place. There is no ‘before school’ play outside.

Arrangements for Pick Up

With all children in their classrooms with their teachers, we have limited available staff members to ensure students are supervised and then delivered safely to parents/carers, who will be outside the school gates. Please read these revised procedures carefully:

• Students with mobile phones will go to the office to collect their phones before leaving. Phones need to be in school bags until children have left the school.
• Students without siblings at school will go to the pick up areas first.
• While these students are leaving, remaining students will be grouped with their siblings and, when together, they will proceed to the pick up areas. Although you may be able to see your children in sibling groups, they won’t be exiting the school until 2:55 p.m. or 3:10 p.m., after the ‘singles’ have departed.
• Two additional pick up areas are added from Tuesday:
  - The Blacks Walk gate
  - The Janet St staff car park entrance – this will allow us to separate students heading west towards Middleborough Rd from those heading east towards Amery Ave.
• It will be important for parents who park and walk from the western end of Janet St to avoid walking into or through the Janet St pick up area, which is reserved for the safe pick up of students by car. 
  We ask those parents to instead wait at the main ‘remote’ staff car park gate for pick up. Children of those families will exit through the staff car park.

Parents, please note:

• If you need to practise a drop off/pick up routine with your child, please do so before Tuesday 9 June.
• If you are picking up by car, please make your vehicle recognisable to your child. We have lots of black, white and silver cars! Think about a large name sign on the dashboard or side window, or a scarf etc. 
• Please do not arrive too early – we have 2 minute pick up zones and will just need to move cars on to keep pick up and traffic flowing.
• Students awaiting pick up in Janet St or Pakenham St will stand against the school fence if being picked up by vehicles. Please note these areas are reserved for teachers and students involved in car pick ups only. Parents will not be able to walk through the car pick up area.
• No-one should cross Janet St in front of the school; traffic is moving eastwards only for pick up, so you will need to enter Janet St from Middleborough Rd.
• Students walking or riding home with parents: parents will need to socially distance and wait in the areas indicated above on the map.
• School crossing supervision caters for the times above.
• ALL CHILDREN NEED TO BE REGISTERED FOR OSHCLUB PLEASE, in case you are held up. If parents are late, students will need to go to OSHClub and a fee will be charged. Sorry - we cannot have children waiting in, or being picked up from, the office area. Click here to register - registration is free and a great back-up for any time in the future.
  
  
• If your child usually walks or rides home without a parent, we will dismiss them at the gates and times listed above. Parents are not required to pick up children who usually make their own way home.

While your child is at school:

• Prep - Year 2 have mastered the frequent handwashing and sanitising routines and these will be extended to all returning students. Here's an interesting scientific animation to watch about Soap vs. Sanitiser for older students.
• Lunch and recess times have been shortened to 40 minutes and 15 minutes to accommodate the DET operational guidelines. With the whole school back at LPS, we will have two different lunch times and two recesses.
• As we are having a new three week timetable to cater for the adjusted day, all classes will have either Art or Music every week for the next three weeks, rather than alternating these.
• To reduce mixing of year levels, as required, each Year level has been allocated an area of the playground. Please prepare your child that they may need to be resilient if they can’t play in their ‘usual place’.

Things children need to bring to school next week:

• Filled water bottle/s, as taps remain inaccessible. Make sure your child can open and close any containers independently.
• Lunch and snack (reminder: there are no lunch orders this term)
• Year 3 - 6 Learning from Home stationery, workbooks, cards etc.
• Year 3 - 6 Learning from Home completed tasks (these can be brought in over the first few days)

Things children need to leave at home next week:

• Library and take home books, including independent reading boxes.
• Computers or iPads - devices on loan from the school do not need to be returned until 13 July. Your child will need these for virtual home reading.

What else do parents need to know?

• Playground equipment can be used by students who attend school during school hours and should be cleaned by our cleaners.
• Staff have been provided with Personal Protective Equipment (masks, gloves, aprons/smocks). Please discuss this with your child.
• If your child is late to school, please call our office and a staff member will collect them from the Janet St gate. We hope this doesn’t need to happen! Our Prep - Year 2 students have been very punctual.
• As schools need to consider the necessity of using shared equipment at this time, we will continue to provide some online resources to families. These include Epic! Story Box Library and Sunshine Online for reading. For this reason, students do not need to borrow or return any library or take home books yet.
• If your child has an appointment during school hours, please call our office and a staff member will bring them to the Janet St gate to meet you.
• All communication with teachers needs to be by email, phone or Webex. Unfortunately, teachers cannot have face to face meetings with parents this term.

 
And more…

If your child is unwell, or has symptoms of being unwell in any way, they cannot attend school. Please keep them at home until they are completely healthy.

We advise parents that any staff member who has any coronavirus-type symptoms is required to be COVID-19 tested and cannot return to school until a negative result is received. DET has advised all employees this is not the time to ‘soldier on’, as many staff often do over the winter months. This may mean your child has a CRT for several days if a teacher is symptomatic.

Finally, DET principals across the state have been sharing the programs and initiatives that worked well during remote learning, as well as discussing options for feedback. Although we hope a crisis such as this never happens again, and we didn’t complete the roll out of the 13 week program we had planned, it is important for schools to be reflective in case of the unfortunate event of school closure. Once all students are settled back into school (and parents have caught their breath!), we will be surveying the community about our ‘next stage’ contingency planning for any near-future pandemic events. This will draw on your family’s experiences of LFH. 

It has seemed like a very long eight weeks without all our students! Our priority at the moment is a successful transition back to school for everyone. On behalf of our staff, I am extremely grateful to parents for the support you have provided your children, each other and us during this unprecedented time. There have also been silver linings, including the increased time families have spent together. The Prep - Year 2 students returned happy and ready to learn and we are anticipating the same excitement as Years 3 - 6 return to school. We will continue to support students with a strong wellbeing focus as they transition back to learning onsite.

Enjoy the long weekend (Monday is Queen’s Birthday holiday) and we’ll see you all at the gates on Tuesday.

Kim