P&C Meeting Minutes April 9th

For those who couldn't make it to the last meeting, here are the minutes and attachments from the April 9th P&C General Meeting.

P&C Meeting Minutes April 9th
President's Report April 9th

Post meeting notes: 

• Post meeting note re lead cleaning: the school has confirmed with the cleaners that the trusses will be cleaned during the school holidays.
• Post meeting note re independent traffic assessment: quotes are coming in around $2.5 - $3k and as such it is not considered a priority at this stage. We are investigating cheaper alternatives.
• Post meeting note re artisan markets: Liz has informed the executive that the tender process etc will have to be submitted by the school so there is no need for P&C involvement at this stage

The next P&C Meeting will be on Wednesday 14th of May 2014. If you would like something placed on the Agenda please let us know by Tuesday 6th of May - email darlo.parents@hotmail.com

Playground Design Project

Dream Playground Ideas

These holidays when you find yourself confined with wet weather and a child complaining they’re bored, hand them paper and pencil to draw or write their playground ideas. Or if the weather is nice, snap some photos of the best playgrounds you visit.

Submissions will help inspire playground improvements that the school and P&C are planning. Download the flyer here.

Where is the playground going to go?

The section of the playground due for upgrade as a priority is the soil area running along the Top Playground boundary next to the IXL building. (See images below). Students are not currently allowed to play in this area due to the dirt. Covering the dirt is essential for OH&S. 

Process

1) Inspiration Phase: Feel free to let your imagination run wild as this is a brainstorming bit. What would you like  most for the school playground? How would you like to spend your lunch time at school? Draw, paint, write, take photos, or make a collage or model to show us your ideas.  Submit these to us before 9th of May so we can include them in a display.

2a) Sorting Phase: We'll identify reoccurring themes and ideas to understand what types of things are most popular among students. We may also do a survey of shortlisted options for all students to complete. This will give us a base to then design a playground that incorporates elements that kids most want.

2b) Planning Phase:  Behind the scenes the school, P&C, and various adults involved with the working group will be doing the boring but necessary bits to make sure the playground will be safe and within budget (i.e. some ideas might be popular but unachievable due to issues of safety or expense). We'll work out what we can do in the short term, medium term, and long term. Hopefully we'll have a parent architect or designer helping us (put your hand up!). A P&C Working Group is being created and any parents interested in getting involved on the details are welcome to join. Any big P&C decisions will be raised at P&Cgeneral meetings where all members can have their say. We'll probably need to do some fundraising and/or apply for grants and matched funding.

3) Building Phase: This is the noisy messy bit. Works will be scheduled to take place when it won't affect students. Some small DIY elements may be achieved by a parent working bee, other more complicated bits will need us to bring in builders etc to do the work.

4) Playing Phase: I think you can work out what this phase involves!  Kids having fun, and enjoying the playground upgrades.

School Layout

Darlington Public School Playground Upgrade

The section marked in green is the rough area that is prioritised for upgrade. Below are some photos of the space.

We haven't measured it yet but it's about 4-5 metres wide, and 65 meters in length. We'll update you once we've got proper measurements.

(If anyone wants to volunteer to take measurements  & draw scaled picture, step right up)

School Ideas

Some ideas for playground upgrades from the school include:

• Cover the dirt with liquid soft fall
• Stencil onto the liquid soft fall roads and have a bucket of toy cars
• Hand ball courts on the drive way
• Refresh existing stencils on the lower playground and add some more (e.g. snakes and ladders, hopscotch).

Past Student Consultation

In 2012 33 students from Darlington Public School were consulted for inspiration during the design process for Reconciliation Park in Redfern.  

• Consultation Report
• Student Ideas

Erskineville Playground Crawl

Seeking some local inspiration? Use this map to go on a park crawl around Erskineville. 

Get Involved

Contact us on darlo.parents@hotmail.com to get involved in the Playground Working Group or ask questions.

What do you care about?

During my involvement at Darlo I've noticed that there are no shortage of parents with great ideas on how to improve things at the school for our kids. Many a conversation at birthday parties, play dates, and barbeques involves one or more people saying something along the lines of: "What they should do is...". We all have our own bug bears - an issue that we really understand or care about, and are frustrated if it's not addressed.

However, the difference between the ideas that get turned into reality versus those that never go further is whether someone cares enough to not only talk about a problem but to put their hand up to become part of the solution, to say "I'm going to make this happen."

Once that first person steps up, others rise to support them, and that's how things get done. Our achievements last year, and every year, can only be accomplished through the efforts of many parents volunteering their time and energy.

So we would like everyone to think about the one thing they'd like most to see improved or changed at Darlington, and whether they care enough to help make it happen.

If you do care, and are able to help, please get in touch with the P&C, school, or one of the below people - working together to improve the school experience for our kids.

Get involved!

Garden Subcommittee: Seeking volunteers to help out with the garden working bee on Sunday 23rd of March 12pm-4pm. Regularly meets Friday mornings. More info here or contact Kyong at kyongaroo@yahoo.com or Nichola at nichola@biocore.com.au

Trivia Night: Seeking volunteers to help out with the trivia night fundraiser. More info here or contact Heather Clement: heather@fixylady.com.au or 0431 217 302

Sydney Uni Development Subcommittee: Seeking volunteers to help out with advocacy issues to minimse impact of the development on the school kids. Contact the P&C darlo.parents@hotmail.com

Ethics Classes: Seeking volunteers to teach ethics class. More info here, or contact Rebecca Shanahan: rks@wideopen.net.au

Pedestrian Crossing Duty: Seeking volunteers to help children cross the road safely. Contact Rebecca Shanahan: rks@wideopen.net.au

School Fete: seeking volunteers to join a subcommittee to organise the school fete. Contact Marianna Koulias mariannakoulias@gmail.com

Student engagement activities/ clubs: the school has indicated that what they would love most from parents is our time, particularly to enable the school to run extra activities (e.g. photography club, chess club, writing club, computer club) as was trialled fourth term last year. If you have a passion, interest or ability for something that you could share with a group of enthusiastic students please talk to Liz Sinnott.

Sushi orders: seeking volunteers to help collate and count sushi orders on Wednesdays. Contact: school front desk.

We are seeking organisers for the below:

• Working Bee. Co-ordinate with principal to set a date, wishlist of working bee tasks, identify costs, purchase of materials, manage volunteers, etc.
• Playground Working Group. Co-ordinate a small group of like minded parents to work with school/principal to identify school needs, consider playground options, identify best solution, funding requirements, possibly apply for a grant, etc.

Got your own idea you'd like to make happen?

Contact the P&C to gain support to get your idea up and running, or come along to a P&C meeting (second Wednesday of every month, 6pm, in the school staff room).

darlo.parents@hotmail.com

http://darlingtonsandc.blogspot.com.au/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/253101788067191/?fref=ts

Results from the P&C AGM

Last week the P&C held the Annual General Meeting and a new executive was elected consisting of:

President: Luci Temple

Vice Presidents: Viv Smith, Marianna Koulias

Treasurer: Nichola Jephcott

Secretary: Heather Clement, Anna Butler

Non-office bearers: Ifeanna Tooth, Kim Bell-Anderson, Rae Cooper, Jen Burn, Rebecca Shanahan.

We thank last year's executive committee for all their hard work, and welcome their continued involvement, whether it be attendance at P&C meetings, working on a subcommittee, helping out with fundraisers, or supporting the school & teachers directly.

Michael Keating summarised achievements made by parents at the school over the past year, including: 

• incorporation under the P&C Federation; 
• farewelling Colleen with the gift of a trip to the US; 
• MADfest; fundraising BBQs & stalls; 
• online fundraiser, movie mayhem, 
• support for Mabo Day and NAIDOC celebrations, 
• ongoing work by the Garden subcommittee in planting, harvesting, and integrating gardening into kids learning; 
• ethics classes; pedestrian crossing duty;  
• advocacy in relation to the Sydney University Abercrombie precinct development.

Many thanks to all the parents who organised or helped out, as well as those who got involved with the school in other ways, such as helping out in the classroom, on school excursions, or by running an interest group (such as the Photography Club).

Traffic Issues

Traffic around the school is heavier than usual due to works at the university. We are also beginning to experience the annual influx of student drivers who are often inexperienced and unfamiliar with the area’s speed limits.

To help keep our kids safe, please

• Escort younger kids across crossings rather than dropping them off and observing from your car.
• Use the roundabout to make turns: illegal U turns near crossings over double lines are unsafe.
• Don’t stop in the road at the crossings to drop off your kids, this blocks other drivers’view of them and other children.

A survey of traffic on Abercrombie and Golden Grove Streets was conducted in Week 2 by Oz Traffic, and this is the first step to hopefully get a “Lollypop person.”

Crossing Duty

In the absence of an official "Lollypop person", you may have seen the parent volunteer assistants in hi-vis vests attending at the two pedestrian crossings nearest the school. The role of the assistants is to increase driver awareness of the crossings by providing a clear, visible adult presence.

This role is informal and assistants have no authority to stop or direct traffic or pedestrians, but we have found that their presence effectively calms traffic by causing cars to slow down and check their driving environment.

Ideally we’d like to have two assistants present per crossing, morning and afternoon. It takes 30 minutes, and is done on a rotation basis so you can commit just for one session per week if that suits.

If you can help out with crossing duty please contact Rebecca: rks@wideopen.net.au.

Mad Hair for Matilda

Today students wore mad hair to school, with gold coin donations going to support Matilda's YMCA swimathon.

Matilda is in year 6 at Darlington Public School, and participating in the the swimathon on 2nd of March. You can help her by donating online here : https://ymcaswimathon-ianthorpe2014.everydayhero.com/au/matilda.

"please help me raise money so that kids with disabilities can learn to swim, it's great that you are helping me and I say a huge THANKS! wish me luck on the 2nd of March!"

Well done to Matilda who has already personally  raised $1,090 to this great cause!

Her team is $265 short of their goal, so please consider helping them out.

Trivia Night

The first Darlington Public School Fundraiser for 2014 is coming...

When: Friday 4 April 7:00pm
Where: At the school
How much: Tickets will be $25 per person including pizza. $250 for a table of 10. Alcohol will be available for purchase on the night.
What: A chance to connect with other parents while trying to answer questions about anything and everything. Lots of prizes, raffle, silent auction, dancing. Lots of fun!!

Now we need your help:

Donations: Can your work place or business offer a voucher that we can auction? Do you have some amazing gift from granny that you don’t want/need but someone else would? Do you have contacts with alcohol or pizza suppliers who you could ask to help?

Volunteers: We need people to...

• Contact (either in person or with a letter) local businesses and organisations to ask for donations such as...‘lunch for 2’ or ‘icecream for 4 kids’, ‘book vouchers’
• Make a poster to advertise the event
• Sell tickets and organise tables
• Set up and decorate the hall and collect things needed a few days before the event
• MC for the event
• Provide entertainment – Do you know a band who would want to perform?
• Man the bar on the night (preferably with RSA certificate)
• Clean up etc.

If you can help out in any way please contact Heather Clement on heather@fixylady.com.au or 0431 217 302.