
Telephone: 9488 1900 • Fax: 9481 6135 • info@fitzroyhs.vic.edu.au • Falconer Street NORTH FITZROY 3068
Our TeamsSapphire Indigo Jet Scarlet (Post Compulsory)

June - July 2008

This term in Indigo - 25 July 2008
Principal’s Report - 25 July 2008 - A sustainable school
Participation Group
Slade Literary Award
Principal’s report - 18 July 2008 - School Review

This term in Indigo - 25 July

Students are currently working on our 'Creating Communities' culminating task where students are asked to apply their learning from the term into designing an effective community of their own. Aspects of the community are fixed but the time, place, type of community are up to the students.

In an exhibition to families they will need to address what their community will look like, how it is organised and how it meets all the human needs. Students have received a booklet to scaffold them through the planning of the project. The exhibition evening for all students is on Monday 4 August from 6.30 pm. Please keep the date free, as we would like as many parents and students to attend as possible. It is a wonderful opportunity for

students to display their learning to the school community. In preparation for the exhibition evening Indigo students and their families are welcome to attend the Sapphire exhibition evening held on Thursday 31 July.

After the 'Creating Communities' exhibition evening, student will be exploring how communities experience conflict. This unit will run for about eight weeks. It asks students to explore three main questions:

What sort of conflicts arise in communities and why?
How are those conflicts manifested?
How are those conflicts addressed or resolved?

The main disciplines involved in this inquiry are English, Humanities, Civics and Citizenship, and the Arts.

Principal's Report - 25 July 2008

A sustainable school?

The school and its community has a strong belief that students can be agents of social change. In a twenty first century environment we want to develop students’ capacity to be active and considerate members of their immediate and wider communities. In the curriculum this comes through in an emphasis on both learning communities within the school and our focus on local, national and global communities in the work the students do. Ranging from activities at Merri Creek through to our liaison with a South African school through the Schools4School program students have numerous opportunities to both see how their community works and to actually affect some aspects of it.

Allied with this comes a need for the school as an organisation to tackle some of the important moral, social and ethical issues that our society faces. Today I would like to bring together some of our initiatives in the area of sustainability to illustrate how the school meets one of these challenges.

A major shift in thinking in society in my lifetime has been the gradual acceptance by the wider community that the environment is of fundamental importance to our continued existence. The school is seeking to acknowledge this through the following:

Facility and grounds initiatives - Water sustainability

Over the last four years we sought to reduce the amount of water the school uses from the main water supply. Projects include:

The installation of water tanks with a volume of over 50,000 litres that enable us to water the garden courtyard and the kitchen garden and provide water to flush the internal toilets in the gym and the toilets outside B wing
The new building will add a further storage tank of 20,000 litres to harvest water from the roof
Through the Schools’ Water Efficiency Program we reviewed the use of all the water devices in the school

Energy consumption and carbon neutrality

The hot water supplied throughout the school comes via a solar water system augmented by a gas fired furnace
We had our energy use reviewed by the ‘Energy Doctor’ and, as a growing school, will be seeking to set benchmarks leading to future savings
The new building is designed to enable thermal cooling and warming to occur. No new air conditioners have been added to the school in the last four years and it is not our intent to do so. We are currently looking at a proposal to enable shading to occur in various buildings and o install solar panels to reduce our energy intake from the grid

Education initiatives

Over the last three years we have worked with eight other schools in the inner city and CERES Environmental Park on the Sustainable Schools Program http://sustainability.ceres.org.au/files/sei_program_sustainable_schools.htm
We also were successful in obtaining a grant from the Smart Water fund for the design of a mobile phone game based on water sustainability issues. This is now moving into the development phase. Further information can be found at the WIKI http://fitzswin.pbwiki.com/
We are also involved with CERES and inner city schools in a co-operative project designed to make the schools involved carbon neutral. This will roll out over the next twelve months
The kitchen garden has been established to meet a range of educational and sustainability issues

We will continue to develop our approach over the next twelve to eighteen months as we seek to further improve the environmentally sustainable context of the school. If nothing else this is a moral imperative for the school as a community organisation.

If any community members are interested in becoming involved in the planning for this then I suggest that they contact the convenor of the Built and Natural Environment Committee, Helen McKernan at hmckernan@swin.edu.au.

Tim Fitzgerald

Participation Group - Would you like to be more involved in FHS?

Fitzroy School Council is starting a Participation Group to act as a meeting point for parents and carers who would like to increase their involvement in the school community without a necessarily large commitment. The Participation Group is not so much a committee as a time and place where like minded people can meet, discuss, and co-ordinate their activities.

The main purpose of this group will be to foster and nurture the wider school community, bringing parents & carers, students and school staff together. But it also will be a forum for voicing your ideas and thoughts to the school council.

One of the first tasks will be to develop a program of events for the school community.
Events could be based around a theme:

Year 7: Social activities for year 7 parents & carers, students.
The Library: Book (or Multi-media) week.
The Grounds: Kitchen garden market, events with sustainability focus.
Food Tech Lab: After school Cooking classes/demonstrations/dinners.
Adults only: Trivia nights, Dinners, Music venues.

But these are only initial ideas. As Fitzroy High is a new school we have a blank slate, so come along with your ideas.

First meeting is Tuesday 29 July, 6:30 p.m. at the school.

For further information contact Antony McPhee (School President),
mail@antonymcphee.com, phone 0425 781 405

Slade Literary Award

The Rotary Club of Richmond Inc. is sponsoring the Slade Literary Award
for 2007, which is open to Year 9 and Year 10 students from State
secondary schools within and adjacent to the City of Yarra. It is aimed at
encouraging development of literacy skills of school children. The award
will be made to the best piece of prose or poetry of up to 1000 words on
any topic.

Judges will be looking for creativity, originality, fluency, conviction
and appeal. A cash prize of $200 and books up to a retail value of $60
will be given to the winner, and a cash prize of $150 together with books
up to a retail value of $60 will be given to the second best entry.
Certificates will be given to all other finalists. Presentation of the
awards and certificates will be made at an official dinner on the evening
of Monday 8th September.

Entries can only be made with the official entry forms available on the
Richmond Rotary Club website www.rotaryrichmond.org.au or from Tom
Robinson (Jet) Peter Bennet (Scarlet) or Pauline Rice. The closing date
for entries is Friday 16th August.

Principal’s report - 18 July 2008

School Review

At the school council meeting last night the school reviewer, Bob Neal, presented the final version of the review. The executive summary is available on the School Council page on the school web site.

Following are some quotes from the report:

‘With all the excitement of establishing a new school in 2004, the school community of Fitzroy High School has successfully implemented the initial mandate that was outlined at the time the school was reopened. This required the school to develop as a school characterised by high levels of educational innovation – with a particular emphasis upon the middle years.’

‘An advanced system of recording the performance data for each student aids with the guiding of learning plans and reporting of progress.’

‘The students’ attitudes to school data and the parent opinion survey results show a relatively high level of satisfaction with many of the key variables.’

‘The need for high levels of wellbeing and engagement by students are well recognised at Fitzroy High School as key factors in promoting high level learning outcomes. The school places great importance on the strength of relationships between teachers and students and between students and students. There is ample evidence of high levels of student connectedness to the school and a high regard for the effectiveness of the teaching and learning opportunities provide.’

‘The school is to be congratulated on the achievements involved in establishing the school since 2004. The rate of growth and the strength of the outcomes demonstrate the successful implementation of the mandate.’

As was clear in the annual report that was sent home at the end of last term student academic outcomes are consistently at or above the state average and improvement in these areas occurs at a greater rate than at comparable schools. We are proud of our record so far but acknowledge that we need to be aiming for continued improvement.

Over the course of this term we will use the review to develop a strategic plan to guide us for the next four years. Members of the community interested in assisting with this should contact the convenor of the Education Committee, David Brant.

Building works

If you visit the school you will see that significant progress has been made on the new Year 11 and 12 wing. Despite hitting some very hard rock we are now largely ‘out of the ground’. The builders have worked very well with the school and there has been little disruption to the school program.
Over the next few weeks we will start to see the works rise above ground level and start to gain a real impression of the building’s footprint on the site.

Staffing

In addition to the changes I announced in the letter accompanying the report I am pleased to say that we have gained the services of a very experienced Maths teacher, Ian Willson, to work with the Year 10 program. This means that often there will be two teachers available per class to work with students.

Tim Fitzgerald

February - March 2007

October - December 2006

Telephone: 9488 1900 • Fax: 9481 6135 • info@fitzroyhs.vic.edu.au • Falconer Street NORTH FITZROY 3068