Principal's Message

Dear Parents and Carers,

This is important information regarding the coming weeks here at BRPS.

Starting tomorrow, Wednesday 29^th May, all students will continue their online learning via SeeSaw as they did at the end of Term 1. Students who require hard copy packs can still pick them up from the front office.

The school will remain open for students who need to attend. Supervision will be available for these students, and they will engage in the same learning as the students ‘learning at home’. As also announced by the NSW Premier, parents are encouraged ‘to keep their children at home’. The Department of Education has requested one mode of learning, so please be assured that both students ‘learning at school’ and ‘learning at home’ will receive the same level of instruction and materials.

Yesterday we designed a model for BRPS that will see children gradually returning to school during Term 2. In this initial phase, from Week 3, Monday 11^th May, every student will have the opportunity to start attending school one day a week. This will mean that we will have around 25% of students at school on any given day and allow us the opportunity to maintain social distancing for the children’s safety.

We looked at a number of different options, but in the end felt it was better to go with the whole stage group attending on the same day. Although this poses some organisational challenges for parents with more than one child attending school, having the whole stage at school will mean that the children get to connect socially with their peer group as well as be with their class teacher throughout that day. We looked at bringing families back together but this would mean that your children may be attending on a day when none of their friends are here which we didn’t like the thought of. Also, staff are on a roster where some days they are at school and others they work from home, so we could not guarantee that your child’s teacher would be at school on the day that the whole family attended school.

Today we attempted to call all families with more than one child at school to discuss the option of sending their children on different days whilst keeping the others at home to complete their online learning and the response was overwhelmingly positive and supportive from parents. Can I thank you so much for your responses. As you can imagine, the organisation for 630 students, 450 families and 70 staff is no easy feat, but the continued support from our community will go a long way to help us do the best job we can possibly do.

So…

From Monday 11^th May our Weeks 3 to 10 ‘Phased Managed Return’ to School will be as follows:

Monday – Kindergarten and Diverse Learning Team

Tuesday – Stage 1

Wednesday – Stage 2

Thursday – Stage 3

Friday – Students who need to be at school only

We anticipate that from Monday to Thursday we will see around 200 students at school each day. This will mean that we will have to use approximately 20 rooms to maintain the social distancing requirements. This will use up all of our suitable classrooms so those students who have to attend each day (we had about 30 each day at the end of last term) will be supervised in either the hall or the library as they complete their online learning tasks.

My staff are ready for Term 2, they have worked tirelessly over the holidays to make sure they are fully prepared for a mixture of online and one day a week face-to-face learning with their students.

We look forward to connecting with our students tomorrow.

Glen