It is hard to believe that we are already halfway through the year. It has been a busy first half and we would like to take this opportunity to update you on some of what has been happening in front and behind the scenes.

Staff Movement

A warm welcome to Ansie Whitby who has joined our family as our new Music Teacher. We wish her all the best for her new adventure at KPS and look forward to sharing her musical journey with our children.

Building and Infrastructure

At the beginning of the year, a new building committee was resurrected. Its first task was to tackle how to move the Learning Support Classroom so that adequate space would be available for the construction of a second court for the school. With much nervous apprehension the classroom was moved on June 17th using two cranes, which accomplished the task in two steps. We subsequently received sign-off from a Structural Engineer post move, and the Learners were very excited to use the classroom in its new position. This is however a temporary measure. We are ultimately looking to incorporate the Learning Support Classroom in an extension of the school building, doing away with the prefab buildings. We’ve encountered a few snags in terms of budget constraints for this project, but plan to meet in earnest to discuss innovative ideas and funding for the new wing, to incorporate the art room, Learning Support Room, and sports storage plus new ablution facilities.

The construction of the second court has been delayed by the approval process, which involves obtaining permission from the WCED, the DPW and the Local Council before construction can commence. We believe we’re just about there, thanks to the tireless efforts of Stefano Lindsay and members of the building committee and expect that construction will commence imminently. The approval process for the second court has proved to be a huge learning curve for us all, but has provided us with much needed insight for future plans for further development of our school.

Our building committee is comprised of key members of staff (Rita Elsworth, Jane Teixeira, Lucy Winter), SGB members (Liesa Trengrove, Jessica Cohen , Jeremy Bristow), and parent volunteers (Brett Glasby, Gillian Smith and Sook-Hee Moran Nicolas). We welcome any insight or volunteers from our parent body to join the building committee.

Safety and Security

The safety and security committee plans to explore potential solutions for the Teubes road drop-off and pickup zone.

In addition, we note the change in mask requirement for the school per the DBE, and recognize that learners and school staff are welcome to choose to continue masking or not as a personal decision. We wish to remind parents to continue to monitor their children, and if ill with symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat or vomiting/diarrhea to please rather keep them at home.

Our Safety and Security committee is comprised of key members of staff (Cathy Eitzen and Mr G, Stephanie Orgill and Andrew Kesner), SGB member (Sarah Geline).

ITC

With the rise of the pandemic in 2020, KPS was forced to respond very quickly to the role of Information Technology in our children’s education. As the dust settled a new Information and Communication Technology (ITC) committee was formed to help guide the management of, planning for and implementation of new technology within the school for both school administration and technology use in student education.

Below is our technology vision and how we are implementing it:

Empower our teachers and administrative staff in the efficient and effective use of the Google education cloud platform in the running and delivery of education at KPS.

  • Our staff have completed the following Google Training:
    Gmail, Drive & Docs 102 and 102, Interactive Slides, Shared Drives Best Practices.
  • The following will be completed by September:
    Classroom 102, Chromebooks 101, Sites 101, Calendar 101, Calendar Best Practices

Prepare our students to be confident and responsible digital citizens

  • Digital literacy & citizenship (Internet Awesome)
  • Google workspace (being able to use our toolkit)
  • Computational Thinking (CS First/Scratch/Scratch Junior) as well as additional Coding and Robotics as an extra mural
  • Chromebooks - teachers are integrating ITC in their lessons, using technology alongside traditional methods

Our ITC committee is comprised of key members of staff (Lucy Winter and Jane Teixeira)

Finance

Financially, the school has done slightly better than expected in the first half of the year, thanks in large part to our parent body for continuing to pay your much-needed school fees and the school’s continued prudent approach to expenditure. We’re optimistic that the cautiously developed and applied budget for 2022 will help see the school through what is set to be a tough second half of the year.

Marketing

Earlier this year, KPS took some time out from our normal lessons to generate some fresh promotional material for our school. The results have been fabulous and we had lots of fun putting it together.

Thank you to our parents (Alan van Gysen and Karin Schermbrucker) and Will Bendix, for all the wonderful footage.  We hope you like it as much as we do.

As an SGB we are committed in governance to support and assist our school management team, staff and parents to help ensure that our children get the best, well rounded education that they deserve.

Should you wish to contact us, please send us an email to sgb@kommetjieprimary.co.za.

Thank you for your support and we wish you all the best for the term ahead.

Your sincerely,

The school governing body