Term 1 - Issue 1 2025
Principals Report
Welcome back to another year at Bagdad Primary School. It was fantastic to see all of our students back on the first day, especially seeing how much some of them had grown over the break! Also, I couldn’t get over the number of parents on site the for the first day drop off. Please keep coming in, we love having the school buzzing each morning with people. Don’t forget to help yourself to some breakfast (it is open to everyone). Once again, our friends at Variety Tasmania and Aurora Energy are funding our Breakfast Club and it is being managed by our wonderful parents and other volunteers.
I’ve been in education for about 18 years now, it could be more for all I know as the kids keep telling me I am getting older and forget things. To be honest this is the smoothest start to a new school year that I have ever seen. I am not just saying that, but I genuinely mean it. I am beyond proud of our kids, our staff and our community with the start that we have had. This is a testament to everything we all do for our kids each and every day!
The Bagdad Best
Over the past few years, we have all done a mountain of work with our school relating to getting the conditions of learning right. After a lot of hard work by everyone in our school community we have a calm school, minimal disruptions, students who are known and understood, strong values and great structures for support. All of these things support the core business of a school which is the learning.
This year we have introduced The Bagdad Best as a common language and way to frame up the key things we have in place at our school to support our learning.
The Bagdad Best is made up of four key parts including Positive Behaviour, Wellbeing, Learning and Values. This framework guides our students, staff and community in enabling everyone to feel safe, happy and valued.
Bagdad Swap Stand
We finally have fresh produce in our Swap Stand. Yes, it is called a Swap Stand, but we are not very good with naming things. Short of it is if you want something out of it, please take it, we don’t want it going to waste and would rather people just take it.
If you can swap something for an item that would be appreciated. This could be other produce or even things for breakfast club such as vegemite etc. If it is homemade honey or jams, please put the recipe on the back and who made it. The other option is that Mr. L can eat anything that isn't taken.
Canteen – On Pause
As mentioned in many different formats last year (Seesaw, Newsletter and Facebook), The Parkside Foundation, who offer support for people with disabilities, is no longer able to support our canteen due to financial constraints out of their control, in addition to the distance to travel to and from Bagdad. This was a very last-minute bit of news at the end of 2024!
This small team of people from Parkside put in many hours at our school to ensure our kids had canteen orders once a week. Behind the scenes this was a mountain of work for them as well as the parent volunteers organising the orders each Tuesday. Honestly, words cannot sum up how grateful we are for what they gave back to our school over the years.
With The Parkside Foundation no longer able to help we have had to put the canteen on pause for the time being. As you can imagine, this has proved extremely difficult to find a solution. For the time being we will offer counter sales to our kids once a week starting in week 5 on a Wednesday recess only. We are still trying to figure this part out!
However, as luck would have it, we managed to get the School Lunch Program twice a week this year, this was very good timing for our school. This leads me on nicely to the next bit in the newsletter.
School Lunch Program
We are lucky enough to have been accepted to be part of the School Lunch Program for this year and every year from now on! It really is an amazing program for our school to be able to offer to our kids twice a week.
There has been a lot going on over the break in a very short time. Our canteen kitchen has had a big refit including new commercial kitchen equipment, additional storage, and a lot of kitchen equipment. I really am amazed at how the kitchen is looking now. All of this was provided by the School Lunch Program. Along with the kitchen upgrade we have a new member of staff coming to prepare the food each week. Sarah Randall will be our kitchen supervisor along with some help from our eager Year 6 students.
We will start the program on Tuesday 25th February with our Year 3 to 6 students. Once we get this right, we will slowly introduce our younger kids to the program. As many of you know mealtimes can be challenging enough, but we will be attempting to do this with 170 kids twice a week by the end of Term 1. I have no doubt we will have some issues along the way.
All students will be eating together, even if they aren’t eating the food provided, they still can be part of the group at the table. Feel free to send lunch along with you kids for the first few weeks just in case. Many schools have reported that the kids who are fussy eaters at home often will eat at school and try new foods when they are around their friends.
Some days we may have leftovers that were not served, and to make it clear the kids have not half eaten this food and put it back in a container. The leftovers are safely packaged and dated for any families that want to take them home. We will let you know where you can take these from as soon as we figure that part out. You will need to be quick as Mr. L will most likely still want more to eat, along with all our Swap Stand food!
Communication with our Families
We have gone completely digital with everything at our school, with minimal amounts of paper being sent home scrunched up in the bottom of school bags. The main ways we communicate with our families are:
School Webpage – All our general information, school policies and links to other things can be found here. As soon as any key documents are updated, they are uploaded directly to our school page. Our website is: https://bagdadprimary.education.tas.edu.au/
School Calendar - Our school wide calendar is available online. We put all events such as excisions, assemblies, and other important dates on here. In addition, we attach any relevant documents such as letters to events. https://bagdadprimary.education.tas.edu.au/calendar
School Newsletter – Our school newsletter goes out 3 times per term on our school website along with a link on Facebook. Our newsletter mainly contains information that needs to go out to our whole community as well as a celebration of our students learning. Previous issues can be found in the newsletter archive on our website: https://bagdadprimary.education.tas.edu.au/archive
Facebook – Our school Facebook main is mainly now a place where we can share any quick bits of information or reminders, but nothing that is important! We also like to share a lot of photos and videos of what is going on around our school. Comments are turned off on Facebook as a requirement from the Department of Education, Children and Young People (DECYP). https://www.facebook.com/bagdadprimary
Seesaw – Seesaw is our internal parent only communication platform. This is where teachers will share student work, general class reminders and the odd message. Seesaw is not to be used to share important information, concerns or messages. This needs to be done directly in person of via a call to teachers or to our office staff.
In person or a call – This is the one I like the most! So much can get lost in a text message, a letter or a post. Please always come in a speak to someone or call the school if you have any questions, concerns or just feel like a chat (yes there are some amusing chats before and after schools with parents and staff that are not school related). We want to know sooner rather than later if there is a worry, often things can be addressed very quickly and there are easy solutions. Please don’t sit on things that may be of concern.
Kind Regards,
Phil Novak
Principal
5/6 with Miss Stokes
5/6 have had a great start to the year! We have been busy getting to know one another, getting into routines, phonics, and focusing on our narrative writing skills!
School Lunch Program
Please find below a copy of our menu for the School Lunch Program in Term 1. The program will start in week 4 of Term 1 for our students in Years 3 to Year 6 and will be served every Tuesday and Friday. Our younger students will slowly start joining in as Term 1 progresses.
If your child's School Lunches Program form has not been returned, they will not be able to eat food provided by the program. The forms outline any allergies or other issues they might have with foods.