More School Preparations and Arrangements                          15 October 2021

In preparation for the return to school, we have seen a high level of communication from DET and the Department of Health this week. We certainly feel that all our staff are well-prepared to support your children and, with the co-operation of our parents/carers, maintain a COVIDSafe environment.

Importantly, all families should check their contact details on Sentral, as these will be used in the event of COVID notifications, in addition to any other emergencies. If your details are incorrect, please email the office. All contact details in Sentral are regularly overridden by DET's CASES21 system, which can only be updated by our office staff. 

Thank you to the 53 Prep families who attended the Prep Parents@Webex session yesterday, and to our Prep team for responding so clearly to your Google Form queries. We will upload the summary of each presentation to Sentral as soon as possible.

As we move into the next phase of the staggered Return to School, we are organising more Parents@Webex sessions. These are for Middle and Senior School parents, just prior to those year levels returning.

Please keep these dates free, if you are wanting to attend:

• Middle School (Years 3 & 4) Parents@Webex Thursday 21 October at 2:30 pm
• Senior School (Years 5 & 6) Parents@Webex Friday 22 October at 2:30 pm

As we did with Years Prep - 2, teachers do want to ensure they address the most important and relevant wonderings. Once again, our Parents Group is kindly assisting teachers with Google Form results for families' questions around your child's reconnection, wellbeing and successful transition back to school.

The Google Form link will be sent today via Sentral email to the preferred contact (which could be your partner) in each family, asking you:

How can we, as a school community, all work together to best support my child to successfully return to school?
Please respond with any hopes and wonderings that you may have relating to your child's reconnection and wellbeing that may be supported by yourself, teachers and leaders in their return to onsite schooling.

When the Middle and Senior school teams receive these Google Form compilations, our teachers will tailor their Webex presentation to respond to important and relevant themes.

These Google Form links will close at 9 a.m. on Monday 18 October. 

More Arrangements for next week and beyond:
 

Water bottles - please ensure your child brings a filled water bottle (clearly named) to school each day.

Ensure your child can organise their own face mask. For obvious health and safety reasons, teachers cannot assist children to remove or replace face masks. Year 3 - 6 parents should be organising the mandated masks for their child to wear indoors. Please see LFH eNews #37 for more info on masks.

Classroom Setup - our teachers are reorganising classrooms to promote social distancing. The practice of students 'sitting on the floor' in a close group will be temporarily replaced by teaching children at tables and in outdoor spaces. As we already follow the Clever Classrooms model, which optimises light, air quality and temperature, we feel well-placed to adapt our clutter-free classrooms as needed. Additionally, as our class sizes are small, this also helps with social distancing.

Prep - Year 2 Specialist classes will now be removed from the school Webex schedule, as our specialists teach classes on-site. We will be utilising these staff to deliver programs in the most COVIDSafe way possible, which includes outdoor classes.

Library Books: Although we regret that library borrowing is still not permitted, please return your child's library books when they resume school. Mrs Keogh would love to be able to progressively quarantine batches of books, as required, over several weeks.

Loan devices can remain at home, to cater for 'part-time LFH', until students are back at school full-time.

LFH packs should be returned to school with your child. New LFH packs (with spare books etc) will again be distributed as each year level returns. Please keep these at home for now. We hope they won't be needed, but understand there will be very little notice if we do have an emergency closure.

Students will continue to play and learn in 'bubbles', and our staff have similar arrangements to restrict their movements on-site.

If your child needs to bring a mobile phone to school, these will be collected each morning and distributed each afternoon by their class teacher, not through the office.

Our handwashing and sanitising routines will be reinstated, with explicit instructions from teachers.

Please remember the drop off and pick up times explained further in LFH eNews #46, including:

• Students with surnames starting with A - L will be in the yard from 3:10 p.m. and ready for dismissal at 3:15 p.m.
• Students with surnames starting with M - Z will be in the yard from 3:25 pm (at the latest) and ready for dismissal at 3:30 p.m.

We thank parents/carers/grandparents for remaining outside the schoolgrounds, particularly given the following new information. The presence of anyone on schoolgrounds who returns a positive COVID diagnosis triggers a series of actions from DHHS and DET, including the potential for part or whole school closure. This includes the period of time when that person was infectious but may not have had any symptoms. Put simply, to stay open we need to limit visitors to those who are absolutely essential. 

If you need to pick up your child, or drop them off, during the day, please call the office from the Janet St gate and someone will assist.

All extracurricular programs remain postponed until further notice.

Finally, thanks to those parents who let us know about the useful material being produced by the Royal Children's Hospital, including this video on supporting children as they return to school:

We expect further updates over the coming days and weeks and, as usual, will update parents progressively via LFH eNews.

Stay safe everyone - we are so looking forward to having Prep - Year 2 students back on-site, safely, next week.

Kim