Dear Parents and Carers,

It has been exciting to welcome 3 new students to our school this term. Layton has started in Early Years with Miss Lynne’s class, Mason started this week with Mr Dale in Primary, and next week we welcome Ruby to one of our Senior Secondary classes. A huge welcome to our new students and their families as they join the Gympie Special School community. As I mentioned in our last newsletter, we are getting regular enrolment queries at the moment. It is a testament to the hard work and gains the school has made with communication, literacy, numeracy and behaviour over the past few years that we have so much interest from families. 

After walking around our school over the past few weeks, I have been impressed with the overall behaviour and engagement of our students. As a staff, we have been focussing on transitioning as part of our Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) around the school and we will continue to focus on how our students transition for the rest of this term. We have made some changes in how we pack up at the end of a play time, how students move from one area to another and how we stop doing one activity before moving to another. I have been impressed with how quickly most of our students are adjusting to these small changes to make our school a safer place.

Thank you so much to those families who have started sending in some donations for our CENT SALE on Saturday 6^th November. If you have any suitable donations, please drop these into our office. We need approximately 200 prizes for the Cent Sale to be a success. Children’s toys, household items, grocery items, decorative items, Gift vouchers – any new and unused items will be welcomed as donations. If any businesses would like to donate a prize, please let us know.

I will be on sick leave from Thursday 26^th August to Monday 13^th September as I require some surgery. Rachael Pelling will be Acting Principal and Shellie Pursey will be Acting Deputy Principal during this time.

Last week we received the sad news that one of our students had passed away. On Monday, some of our staff were able to join Harris’ family in celebrating his life and farewelling him at his funeral. Our thoughts and prayers go to his family. If any of our students require any support and someone to talk to, please do not hesitate to let us know so we can organise this.

Moving forward, learning together,