A further update...                                                         28 July 2021 

What a lovely return to school today, with children very happy to reconnect with their friends and teachers. Year 6 students have even been cheering! It's great to be back, for sure.

Schools have received an updated Operations Guide from DET, based on the Chief Health Officer's advice. This reflects the critical situation described yesterday by the Premier, as we enter 'Lockdown Light' for at least the next two weeks.

The Guide includes new requirements and considerations for schools, to support the health and safety of our students, staff and parents/carers. You may have already experienced one aspect of that if you dropped your child at a school gate this morning. Please be reassured that we have additional staff in the yard, and especially in the Junior area, to help children to their classrooms, if needed.

Although we are trying to avoid reintroducing staggered start and finish times for the school day, this is an option that schools have been advised to consider. Please contribute to alleviating this challenge in such a large school; for example, continue to maintain social distancing, avoid congregating near the school gates and only have one parent/carer collect your child. At the moment, only our end-of-day is partly staggered. 

We are maintaining the workforce bubbles that staff experienced last term and working in masks. Added to this, students' break times and play areas are organised in year level bubbles again and break times are staggered. We remember the last time this was used and students outside my window are having a great time at the moment in their 'own' playground space. A silver lining already! When inside classrooms, mixing of students even within the year level is limited and that now includes inside assemblies.

Incursions are cancelled and there are stricter safety measures for excursions. Unfortunately, there are some planned events that are affected by the new guidelines:

• Like many other schools, Year 3 - 6 Athletics tomorrow is cancelled. Rachel and Shazan are working on an 'Athletic Trials at school' plan and we'll update you on that further. Families who have paid for this event will have a credit allocated to their account.
• Year 2 swimming is cancelled and we'll check if another date is possible.
• Life Education is postponed until incursions are allowed again and we determine whether rescheduling is possible this year.
• The Book Week parade is postponed.

We will make decisions about Year 1 and 3 swimming closer to those dates - please wait to pay for these events until further notice.

We had sent out Family Statements last week so that parents could reconcile their refunds from last term; we will now need to do that again in the coming weeks! As this process involves office staff individually crediting one family at a time, we will wait to confirm any rescheduled events before doing this credit allocation. Thanks for your patience.

All extracurricular activities are suspended until further notice, including LPS Music tuition.

With non-essential visitors limited, please email the office with any queries. School Tours are cancelled again, however, our Virtual School Tour is now available on the website home page. Kinder transition programs are temporarily suspended.

On the bright side, students can borrow and return library books and the 'usual' classroom learning has resumed without a hiccup today. Both our Year 4 and 6 camps, organised to meet COVIDSafe guidelines, are currently still on; however, that is subject to change in such a volatile environment, like everything else.

As we did after previous lockdowns, Wellbeing is a major focus today and over the coming weeks, in both classrooms and specialist lessons. It is great timing for Parent-teacher Meetings this week; please talk with your child's teacher if you have any concerns about their transition back to school. 

This week's 'LPS eNews' will be held over and we'll continue to email parents any important updates.

We can surely manage this for two more weeks. Yes, we can!

Stay safe,

Kim