Bulletin 21 RCoBS (Dec 14, 2017)

RECOMMENDATION That the Club support the Principal, teachers and staff of the Lightning Reef PS in providing a one off $5,000 donation to each of the three (3) Programs. Total $15,000.

The community of Lightning Reef Primary School write to you in support of our Passions & Pathways Program for Year Six students, Keep it REAL Program for Year Prep to Year six students and Breakfast Program for 60 -80 students per day.

Passions & Pathways is a program that links our Year Six students with Community Enterprises and Businesses in the Bendigo Region. The GLENN headed by Anne Brosnan assisted by Dzintra Martin are the organisational body behind this program.

Passions & Pathways allows our students to experience a working life and working prospects first hand. This is an experience 96% of our students would not have in their lives if not provided by school / businesses. Our student family occupation rate is .83 meaning that very few parents live a working life. Our students do not have working role models in their environment.

This program runs at a cost of $23,000 to the school. This expense is increasing as our grade levels rise. We have no means of supplementary funding to ensure this very successful, vital program continues. I ask for your financial support to ensure we can continue to provide the Passions & Pathways experience for our students. The funding would provide the transport means for our students to be escorted to and from businesses as they participate in this valuable experience.

The Keep it REAL program provides students with a practical hands-on program involving cooking, bike maintenance, gardening, craft and other opportunities. We are focussing on the cooking program currently and devising a way to continue this program as funds are a problem.

This program is unable to be supplemented by any other source than the school budget, which is unfortunately unable to meet the budget requirements for 2018. We seek funds to buy weekly ingredients for recipes such as baked potatoes, nachos, salads and other simple yet nourishing meals for our students. This program assists students to learn life skills that can be transferred to their own lives away from school. They learn to create a shopping list, read a recipe, calculate money, cook for themselves / others and best of all keep themselves healthy. I am faced with reducing or deleting this very important program from our curriculum without funding support.

The breakfast program provides much needed nourishment for students to start their day well.

This program is supplemented by Foodbank and Foodshare parcels / deliveries. We use staff manpower to deliver meals to our students daily. This time and effort is given from the heart, as this program is an extra duty outside of a teacher’s role. We are seeking volunteers to assist our staff to deliver the breakfast program daily.

Breakfast Club starts at 8.00 in readiness for student arrival at 8.30. The program concludes at 9.00 for students and 9.30 for staff.

The Principal of Lightning Reef Primary School Julie Hommelhoff proved an excellent orator, convincing all board members the value of the programs.