I hope you all had a fantastic holiday and it is great to see everyone back at school. We got off to a very smooth start last week and I must congratulate all our staff and parents for making it so great for our kids.

This year, we have about 730 students attending here at Kingston and about 114 of these students are here for the first time. It is a pleasure to have them here at Kingston and I look forward to meeting you all over the coming weeks and months.

Most of our staff officially started back at work on January 30. We had a couple of days together to meet and prepare for the year before the kids started. On the Friday, we all participated in a new whole school writing strategy called “Talk for Writing”. This will be one of our curriculum focus areas this year.

The coming weeks are very important at school for your child - perhaps the most important of the year. We are working hard at our school to ensure all of our kids get the best start possible. Please be sure to support us over the next couple of weeks by making contact with your child’s teacher even just to say hello. Find out how and when you can be involved at some stage during the year in the classroom. By doing this you will demonstrate to your child that you value education and that school is an important part of their lives. Our teachers are also holding information sessions for parents. You will receive some information very soon from your child’s class teacher regarding these. Please make sure you get along to these sessions and meet the staff working with your child this year.

Student Enrolments

In the first two weeks, as all public schools do, we will be closely monitoring our class sizes to ensure we can meet the industrial requirements. I would like to keep our class sizes under the guidelines. If I need to reallocate classes, parents will be notified. Please note that at Kingston we do not enrol new students who live outside of our intake area.

Kingston App

Our website acts as our 24/7 newsletter and is updated as such. To produce a paper newsletter for 700 students every two weeks cost many thousands of dollars each year. We would rather spend this money on resources for our kids. You can access our information conveniently from your phone, iPad/tablet or computer. If you haven’t already, please download our free iPhone and android app and stay up to date with our school information. Simply search szapp in the app store and follow the download directions. The Kingston szapp code is 5810.

New Staff

We only have a couple of changes to our teaching staff this year. We welcome Shanyn Gibbs in one of our year six classes. Miss Gibbs comes from O’Connor Primary School in Kalgoorlie. We also have Rachel Sturtecky working in LA 11 with our year fives and a warm welcome back to Samantha Gibbs and Alexis Yurisich who have returned from maternity leave and are working in T6 with our year fours. We also have a new school psychologist, Lara Lazzari. As we said last year, Mr Philp has moved over to Harvey Primary as the Deputy Principal. In his place this term is Mrs Eckersley. We will have a couple of other changes in this area later in the term when Miss Uren takes a well-deserved break on long service leave.

School Uniform

Finally, congratulations to all of our students and parents for ensuring that everyone is wearing the school uniform. We have 100% compliance with our uniform policy – Well done! This makes a big difference to your child’s experience at school. Thank you.

Once again thank you contributing to such a smooth start to the school year for all of our students here at Kingston.

Regards

Ashley King

Principal