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.

Last 4 Days!

Online fundraiser count down

It's down to the last few days of the fundraiser!

We're sitting at $6,031 - which means we've raised enough for 5 desktop computers and four tablets! 

There's still time to help by pledging or sharing. We would really love to raise a further $1,469 so that we'll have enough tablets for 1 per classroom. 

Tablets are the cheapest type of computer ($250 each), and have additional features that allow multimedia creation including video, photos, and sound recording. Tablets will have priority use by students with special learning needs, with secondary use for class multimedia projects.

Ways to pledge:

If you can't pledge via the website & paypal (preferred), please download this Pledge Form and pay by direct deposit, cheque, or cash.

Why raising this money for new technology is so important: The new Australian Curriculum places development of student technology skills as a requirement alongside other skills such as literacy and numeracy, and the new Minister for Education has indicated an intention to make the NAPLAN an online test from next year - both these things are difficult when our school has on average only 4 aging computers per classroom.

Goals

The school identified that the first priority was to raise $5,000 for five desktop computers, and that the next technology priority is 10 tablets (one per classroom, $250 each). 

The primary use of these tablets will be for students with special learning needs, with secondary use by classes for integrated learning including creation of digital works such as videos, photos, sound recordings, animation, ebooks, digital artwork.  

The next priority in the school technology plan is 34 notebooks ($500 each) for a mobile computer lab - which will allow a teacher to do an integrated technology lesson to a whole class.

Spreading the word:

There's still time to spread the word, to help us get more pledges. 

Whether it's talking to family and friends, or talking to local businesses, or approaching media, commenting on blog posts, letters to the editor, letter boxing flyers, asking organisations that have a mailing list or blog or social media account if they could mention the school fundraiser. 

If you don't feel comfortable asking for money, that's okay, please consider asking people if they can help in other ways that are no trouble to them - such as if a cafe will let you put up a poster, or if an organisation can tweet the link. There are images, posters, and flyers available to share or download on the P&C blog 

Another way to spread the word is indirectly, by talking or writing to media and bloggers about the issues related to the fundraiser - such as how the Education Minister is talking about taking NAPLAN online, but that would mean our school would need about 80 computers for year 3 & 5 students - which we simply don't have. 

Other talking topics might be the new Australian Curriculum that requires development of technology (ICT) skills yet the lack of funding for computers makes it hard for teachers to teach it; the inadequacy of the new NSW model of funding public schools which is still leaving many public schools underfunded, etc. Just find a way to mention that our school is trying to work around these problems with the fundraiser - and give them the link.

Let's put in a last burst of effort over the next four days - see how much we can raise!

Virtual Chocolate

Check out the amazing design parent Suzy Pickles did for the virtual chocolate bars!

You can print this out as a flyer to hand out or letterbox:
Chocolate Flyer in Word  
Chocolate Flyer in pdf