I would like to thank students from Upper Primary and the Adolescent Program, families and staff for completing the respective 2019 School surveys. This is a vital tool for the Board and management to gather feedback from the various stakeholders in our School and assists us to set future vision and the development of our Schools Strategic Plan. Over the coming months we will be going through the survey results to ensure any concerns are addressed. Given we are shortly distributing the 2020 fee packs, I would like to clarify queries from the survey as to how the school fees, camps and excursion contributions are set. In September the finance committee establish the school budget to enable the following years fee packs to be distributed to families in October. This is based on an estimate of the income the school may receive through state and federal funding the following year and the expenditure for the previous year. With the decision to reduce the Lower Primary camp to one night this year, staff arranged more activities for the camp however not all the camp fees were expended and as such Lower Primary families will receive a credit for a portion of the camp fees. The RMS school board are committed to keeping school fees as low as possible and I am delighted to inform families that once again for 2020 there will not be an increase in school fees.
After a four year break, RMS were delighted to host the return of the Montessori Picnic which was held at Langley Park on 29 October. This year’s Picnic in the Park saw the recommencement of this interschool event where six of the twelve Montessori schools in Perth attended to meet new friends and have a day of fun whilst being fit and healthy. A huge thank you to Jodi Kerslake and Julie Cowley for arranging this event. We would also like to thank all the parents and friends who attended to help make this day a success. With all the positive feedback from the various schools we look forward to this event once again becoming an annual date on the calendar.
We are unfortunately still having issues with the toilets in the Primary School playground area however our plumber assures me that once all the sand is flushed from the pipes the backups should not occur. We thank you for your patience.
Please be advised that following three years of subscription and promoting the Family Zone program to RMS families we still have a very low usage rate and as such we will be ceasing our family subscription to the program in 2020. Those families who have been using this program to ensure their children are cyber safe both at home and out of school, will be contacted shortly by Family Zone to advise of how they can continue this service privately.
With the beautiful spring weather, we now look forward to our upcoming swimming lessons taking place. This year we are expanding our offering of swimming lessons to include all our adolescent students. I would like to thank our RMS “Baywatch” crew from the Adolescent Program for being role models and recently undertaking their Water Safety certificates. This now enables us to incorporate more water-based activities as we can provide inhouse adequate staff to student ratios. This is particularly prevalent with our upcoming Senior School Odyssey which commences on 4 November as we have now included beach and kayaking activities, along with hiking and cross-country cycling through the Margaret River coastal region.
Vanessa Aikins – Principal
