Have you got your tickets yet? – Lambton Live

Firstly, allow me to offer my thanks to all of our parents and carers for reading, understanding and respecting the limits on purchasing tickets to Lambton Live: Rewind, outlined in last week’s letter. At the time of writing, we have sold 330 tickets so far and they will remain on sale to parents and carers in Round 1 until 7pm on Friday 18 August. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of parents and carers purchasing their own tickets in this round, before unsold tickets are opened up more widely for sale to other family members and friends in Round 2. If you are yet to purchase your first 2 tickets, please do so this week.

School Disco

Last Thursday’s discos proved to be another hit with our students. I hope that I say it often enough – but boy we have terrific kids at Lambton! They participated in the discos with the kind of joy, enthusiasm and respect that parents would be proud of, and we are too. My thanks to the P&C fundraising team who organise and coordinate the event and to the many parent volunteers and teachers that assisted on the night. It was a very successful night.

School break-ins - update

Unfortunately, since writing to you last week, we’ve had 2 further break-ins overnight at school this week. Thankfully, there was no losses on these occasions.  We have been ensuring devices are secure each night so as not to lose further resources, but the inconvenience of a break-in is frustrating. Please continue to vigilant if you live near the school or pass by regularly, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. If you are concerned after hours, please report it to School Security on 1300 880 021.

Have a great week!

David Holland

Congratulations to the following students who were awarded students of the week for Term 3 - Week 4

We have had some enquiries recently regarding the best way to advise the school of an absence for your child from school. Notification of an absence is a requirement under the Education Act (1990). Parents and Carers are required to explain absences of their children from school within seven days of any period of absence.  Here at Lambton Public School we have an automatic SMS reminder that is sent out the morning of an absence and we will also follow up with a written reminder to explain the absence a few days later. 

We understand that on occasions it may slip your mind to advise, or technology may not cooperate! Please do not take these contacts as a rebuke from the school, it is the way we are able to communicate within our systems and assist you in explaining any absence for your child from school. Also bear in mind that all of these methods we suggest below need to be manually entered onto the class roll by staff, we endeavour to do this each morning before the scheduled SMS is sent. Using one of the preferred methods below assists us in doing this as quickly and efficiently as possible and also aids the school in the archiving of explanations long term.

1.     The Audiri app is an easy way to lodge an absence for your child if they are going to be away from school. To do this open the Audiri app on your chosen device - hit the resources button in the bottom right-hand corner - select the FORMS tile from the top left-hand corner - select Absentee Form. The details in this form are sent to the school and are manually entered into the class roll by our administration team each morning.

2.      Reply to the SMS sent each morning, ensure that you only use the text message sent that day for that student, this ensures it is matched to the correct day and student. 

Here are some tips for using the SMS option

·         In this message it is important that you give a reason for the absence, please refrain from just saying 'away' or 'yes' in this message, what you put in this message is recorded on the class roll. 

·         When replying to an SMS message on behalf of multiple students, it is helpful that you give the full names of the students in the reply as the messages are linked to each student not whole families. 

·         If you have forgotten to reply to the text on the day of the absence it is best to contact the school via the Audiri app.

·         Please do not save this number and use it in the future for advising of absence as it does not align accurately in the system and may be lost.

Phone calls and emails to the school - are not our preferred methods of communication in the event of an absence, the Audiri app mentioned above is a more suitable form of communication or replying to the SMS. However, we are able to take explanations over the phone or via email if you have no other method of advising the school of the absence.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this information, please make contact with the school administration team. We sincerely thank the parent body for the care and concern you have for explaining any absences and we hope that this guide assists you in continuing this process.

As the school continues to be notified of Covid-19 cases, we continue to remind all families of the following advice:

• students and staff should not attend school if they are showing any symptoms of COVID-19 or other respiratory illnesses. These include fever, cough, sore throat, shortness of breath, runny nose, loss of smell/taste, muscle/joint pains, diarrhoea, nausea/vomiting, extreme tiredness, unexplained chest pain or conjunctivitis (eye infection).
• If symptoms occur at any time, your child should not attend school and is encouraged to undertake a rapid antigen test (RAT).
• If your child tests positive, they should not attend school while displaying any symptoms and please notify the school.

• Parents are encouraged to register any positive test on the Service NSW website or Service NSW app so that you can be linked to important health care support and advice.