Thankyou everyone for the warm welcome I have received as I have joined Neville Bonner Primary School. There is clearly a strong sense of community and I feel privileged to be principal of this school. I’d like to welcome our new families who have started with us this year, and hope your children have had a settled and positive start to the year. With the restrictions in place I believe we had a settled and organised start to the year and it is great to have students onsite. We are continuing remind our older students who have younger siblings, that they can transition through the school to their younger sibling’s gate. The exception to this is preschool, where we cannot have older students on this site.

New staff

We have a number of new teaching staff who have joined the Neville Bonner Primary School team this year.

Goonlaur Sibunruang - Senior LSP class

Maddie Handley - Kindergarten

Yolanda Shao and Sheree Shoring – Year 1

Joanna Parry – Year 3

Will Colebatch – Year 4

Elizabeth Roufer – Year 5

Amanda Bray – Performing Arts Specialist Teacher

Amy Slaven – ICT Specialist Teacher

Distribution of Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) –

I’d like to recognise the efforts of our staff in running a successful operation in supplying our community with two weeks supply of RATs. Many of our families expressed their thanks to staff which was well received and made them feel their efforts were appreciated.

We will inform you of how we intend on distributing RATs for weeks 3 and 4 next week.

Notification of COVID-19

As we return to school we expect to see positive cases of COVID-19 reported to us for both staff and students. Following a reported case, we work with the Education Directorate to assess the level of risk of each case and communicate to families accordingly.

In the event of a reported case you will receive communication from the school should it be determined that exposure may have occurred within your child’s year group. Generally, we will not be able to divulge information relevant to an individual class unless we categorically ascertain that the risk was unique to that room only. We cannot provide information to families whether the positive tests was from a staff member, visitor or student.

If your child is showing any symptoms, please do not send them to school. Use a RAT or PCR test and isolate until they receive a negative result. If your child has symptoms and has tested negative to a RAT they should stay home and take another test in 24 hours to exclude COVID-19.

Executive Team

Our executive team for Term 1 is as follows below.

Principal P-6 – Will Johnston

Deputy Principal P-2 and Preschool and Kindergarten Team Leader – Sascha Steinbeck

Deputy Principal 3-6 and Specialist Staff Team Leader – Melissa-Louise Brough

Executive Teacher Years 1 and 2 – Janet Hagan

Executive Teacher Years 3 and 4 – Mellissa Hoek

Executive Teacher Years 5 and 6 – Kerry Johnstone

Executive Teachers Disability Education – Charissa Gosper

Getting to Know You Yarns

We will again be carrying out ‘Getting to Know You' yarns. Information surrounding this important event on our school calendar will be sent out early next week. We would like as many families as possible to engage with this event as it provides a great opportunity to meet your child’s teacher. We will be carrying this out online to limit the amount of adults onsite. I am hopeful that later in the year we will be better placed to welcome parents on to site for events such as these.

Will Johnston

Principal