Family Engagement Meeting – Minutes

Tuesday 18^th March, 2014

9.15am

Attendance: Helen, Sue, Ashleigh, Debbie, Michelle, Kathleen, Abir, Wendy, Trilby, Kerrigan, Tanya, Sue

Agenda:

1. Welcome
2. What to expect      (remember you don’t have to take on everything!)
3. A huge thank you

We extended our thanks to the entire Family Engagement team for their support and help already this year.  It’s been amazing to have so many passionate, dedicated and active members on the team who have already contributed in so many ways.  Thank you so much!

1. 4.       Events

We discussed what is on in the near future:

–          Easter Hampers: We need to put these together and decided on doing this on Tuesday 1^st April at 9am in the back of the staffroom.  Anyone who can come along and help with wrapping the hampers will be much appreciated.  Many hands make light work!

–          We Are One day: Friday 28^th March, we hope to see many of you come along and celebrate this day and event with us.  Bring a plate of food from a culture you feel connected to.  The choir will perform for us too!

–          Working Bee: Sunday 30^th March – if you can come along and help out we will have a big focus on stripping the passion poles so we can work with the School Grounds for Learning team to re-do these.

–          Open Night: Thursday 1^st May (term 2), this will involve a day and evening component, plans are still being worked out.  There will be a family picnic during the day so you are all invited along.  We will have a sausage sizzle also.  There will be ways to be involved so we will keep you posted!

–          Mother’s Day Stall: Wednesday 7^th May (term 2), Michelle is organising the gifts.  We discussed in detail the running of this event.  It was decided that we make sure we do a great job of advertising the gifts that can be purchased prior to the day so that children can discuss what they will buy with their siblings prior to the day.  We will have the classes come in grade groups instead of in alphabetical order as in the past it has been difficult to manage the groups of children coming along without their actual class teacher.  Each class will have 10 minutes to get there, purchase and move out.  Aim to have all classes through by 1pm.  We will open a stall afterschool on Thursday 8^th May near the office area (outside) for exchanges or more sales (if there is still items to be sold).  We will need many helpers on the day so if you are free and can help keep the date in mind.

5.       Communication

As a result of our last meeting we have already put some plans into action.  We asked classroom teachers to decide on a way/method (eg. Email, blog, newsletter) they would be communicating with their families and to be consistent about how they would go about this.  We asked them to communicate the method with families.  From our group today it was clear that 9/10 members had noticed a good level of communication and it was being delivered more consistently.  Great!  The question was also posed that while this method that has been chosen by the teacher may be consistent, ‘does it work for all parents?’ Something to keep in mind.

Also as a result of our last meeting we are working on a whole school Communication Policy and we will involve you all in this as we go.  The work began on this last night with the staff Community Development team.

We discussed what ‘effective’ communication is between teachers, parents and families.  These were some of our ideas:

–          Email: This, used regularly and consistently, is the overwhelming preferred method by all.  We are mindful that not all families have access though in the wider community, however class teachers are aware of who they are and they receive notices in hard copy.  Everyone loves the personal classroom connection that you get from class emails.

–          Notices in classroom windows/doors: We discussed the environmental impact of printing all of these for windows but agree it is good to see some notices around the school.  Michelle and Tanya are already planning on using the two community noticeboards for advertising events and for JSC news.  We will do this over the coming weeks as they have just been updated with ‘sunsmart’ information and we didn’t want to be seen as taking that straight down!  We will also put event information up on some external doors for all to view.  Notices up help those parents who don’t access email all the time but email is also still preferred as not all parents come into the school.

–          Community Noticeboards: Tanya and Michelle already onto updating these as per the above.

–          Do the children know what is being communicated: We discussed this as parents often read emails or blogs and ask their child about it and they child is not aware of the event.  This is a really valid point.  The children need to know what is being communicated.  We can take this back to classroom teachers as something to consider.

–          Whole school newsletter: Pretty much everyone misses the hard copy version, the version you can actually pick up and read on the couch!  They are still available, you just need to request one.  However, if we were to make one for every family, at 740 families with 16 pages per newsletter this is A LOT of paper.  Most felt that the children were missing being able to connect with the newsletter as many used to read it in hard copy.  An idea was to have one copy per classroom, however this is still a lot of paper.  An alternative that will be suggested to class teachers is to share the newsletter on Interactive Whiteboards at eating time on a Friday.

–          Year level newsletters: These are enjoyed and appreciated by all.  At present it seems that the Prep, Grade 1 and Grade 2’s are doing these.  We will take this back to other year levels and gather their thoughts.

6.       Other business that came up on the day

Assembly: It was discussed that parents were not always being informed of when their child was performing at assembly.  Tanya will communicate with the performing arts teachers to inform them that this happened this week and that parents were disappointed they did not see their child perform.

Fielders: It was brought up about whether families can be notified in advance of their child receiving a Fielder of the Week or not.  Given it’s an award they generally only get once a year from a classroom teacher, it’s a special event.  Parents like to be able to come along.  We discussed that this was an issue a few years back and the decision was made that only prep parents would be informed as that was their first award.  Tanya will bring it back up with the leadership team as we all recognise this is a special event and this brings more parents and families to our assemblies.

Easter Bonnet Parade: We discussed why this is not a whole school event this year and why it’s optional for Grade 5 and 6 children.  Some parents agreed and some did not about this being a choice.  The decision was made because we are truly trying to listen to the student voice and for many years they have expressed they do not enjoy or connect with this event.  Some do however so this is why the event is now optional.  Tanya said it will be asked of Grade 5 and 6 teachers to make it clear to the students what they can expect if they do and don’t attend, eg. If they don’t come along they miss the parade, the raffle, Easter Bunny etc.  If they do come they need to bring enthusiasm and a hat of some sort.

Fundraising: We discussed fundraising and decided on two ideas for next term –

–          Chocolate drive, beginning 16 June 2014 and ending 25 July 2014.  This sort of fundraiser is good because it allows every family to be involved.  We will aim for packs with no nuts inline with our nut free policy.  We will have an ‘opt out’ policy so if family do not want a pack of chocolates to sell they can opt out, otherwise each family will get one.  We decided to have it run over the holidays to give families more time.  Sue Willougby is looking into this further and has already been active since our meeting and found packs we can get from Cadbury, thanks Sue.  Sue will take this idea to the School Council meeting next week for approval.  A fundraiser like this has raised in excess of $10 000 for our school which is a significant contribution.  Our involvement as a team would be in helping to label and distribute the packs to classrooms.  The office will take care of the money and admin side of things.

–          Disco, sometime in Term 2.  We discussed lots of ideas at the end of our meeting, ideas such as making it $5 per child, not having food involved, getting a DJ to run activities as well as play music, how many parents we would need, payment before the day, grade level splits.  A sub team from our meeting will put out an email to gain more ideas before our next meeting that can be taken to School Council as we need their approval to run this.  Helen Wells has already been active in setting up an email to add ideas to, thanks Helen.

More than just fundraising: We further discussed that the purpose of our group is not only about fundraising.  We were left to think about other ways we can involve the wider community in our school.  We are looking for ideas to be brought back to our next meeting next term.  We are ‘more than just fundraising’.  Many comments were made that people are happy in our group as we know why we have these meetings and that we are ‘getting stuff done!’ We all like to get in and help out, with fundraising as well as other aspects of our school.

Next Meeting: We decided as a group to make this on Tuesday 29^th April at 9.10am – Week 2, Term 2.   We will discuss the Disco, Chocolate drive, the Open day/evening and our ideas for ‘more than just fundraising’, as well as anything that comes up in between.

Meeting closed at 11am.

Many thanks to all who attended and who have been responding via email J