Welcome back to Term 2 at Prescott Primary Northern.  The last couple of weeks have seen further change in our lives, and planning, organising and deciding what should happen and what is best for our children seems to be a constantly moving target. I would just like to say a big thank you to our school family for the way people have been so flexible, accommodating and understanding of each other and the situation we are in. Thanks to our families who are loving, caring for and providing security to our children. Thank you to our teachers and staff who have been thrown changing scenarios for teaching and learning and so readily rise to the challenges, go the extra mile, learn new ways and skills in different ways of teaching, all at the same time as caring for their own families. Also, a big thank you to our children who constantly make me smile with the warmth of their appreciation for each other and those around. I have smiled so hard in the last couple of days with the interactions with children who are back at school.

Mr Davis shared an old saying with us in Staff Worship this morning which I thought was great and has helped me with my perspective. “Worry is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.” I know some of you will wonder whether sending children back to learning at school is the right thing to do and some families are continuing to go with learning from home, and still others were very grateful to drop the kids off this morning (I did notice some of the huge smiles, and sighs of relief at Drop off Zone duty this morning) but whatever your choice, we are working hard to provide the best help we can for our children and their learning. Our teachers worked hard in the week before Easter to prepare learning from home tasks and resources and we will be able to use these for this week and next week as we need. However, unless there is a significant change in our situations, we will have to significantly reduce the Learning at Home support we are providing families at the end of Week 2. We simply don’t have personnel to continue to make and collate the learning from home resources as well as run our normal program.

Another challenge we are facing that we need your help with is patience at pick up time in the afternoon. The regulations require us to minimise as much as possible, adult traffic on the School campus. This means we are not able to let families come on campus to pick up children and this slows the Pick Up process. Add to that the rainy weather and we have an even more challenging situation at pick up time. Please be patient, follow the instructions for the drive through zone (No Right Turn off Nelson Road in to the Church Car Park, No Parking on Nelson Road in front of Para Vista Adventist Church, Turn left on to Nelson Road when exiting the Drive Though) We will add a further 15 minutes to drive through Pick Up time in the afternoon – It will now be staffed until 4pm Monday to Thursday and 3.15pm Friday. If you can come a little later than 3.15pm, say 3.45pm, it will help spread the load.

Finally, we really need families to be extremely vigilant in not sending children to school if they have any cold or flu like symptoms. Understandably, many of our families are very concerned about transfer of infection and if a child is showing any flu like symptoms, please keep them home. Please also remember that this time of year, we usually have several students a day who go home with cold and flu like symptoms and the likelihood of it being something more sinister, like COVID – 19, is very low. We have protocols in place that we follow for such cases.

Have a great week with your kids,

Mark B