Friday 12th Feb 2021

Good evening, Students, Parents, Carers and Guardians

Deep within us we all knew that Remote Learning 3.0 was a possibility and now it is – suddenly – upon us.

The safety and wellbeing of all our students, staff and community members is paramount in all of the decisions that we are currently making. We will all have our own individual responses to the new situation and we will try to make sure that all these responses are acknowledged, respected and supported. I am sure that like us, you will be hoping and praying that this is with us for only 5 days; at the same time we need to be ready to adapt if the lockdown is extended beyond this time.

As things stand on Friday afternoon, the following arrangements are in place at Galen Catholic College for Monday through to Wednesday.

Please refer to the attached “Remote Learning Guide for Parents and Caregivers” for details on period times, attendance requirements and other details. Please see the Remote Learning page for Remote Learning Guidelines.

Monday has been declared by the state education authorities as a planning day for staff to prepare the move to Remote Learning 3.0
Please note that for Years 7 – 11 this means there will be no classes running on Monday
At Galen we will be running Year 12 classes only online on Monday but all other classes are cancelled. These classes will run to the COVID period times (see attached)
The school will provide onsite supervision in the VCE Study Centre and surrounding classrooms for vulnerable students, students whose parents are regarded as “essential workers” and those whose parents cannot work from home and where no other supervision arrangements can be made:
i. Parents whose children meet this criteria MUST register their child(ren) for this supervision via the link on PAM. This link can be found by opening PAM and clicking on “COVID-19 Student Attendance Registration”. This link is also located on the Remote Learning page – link above.
ii. Students and staff onsite must be wearing masks at all times whether inside or outside.

On Tuesday and Wednesday (at this stage) Remote Learning will apply for all year levels
There is a revised set of period times for Remote Learning (see attachment)
Teachers will send a Google Meet link to all students in their class at the commencement of the period
All students and all staff are expected to join and remain connected to the Google Meet for the entirety each period.

The school will run with a skeleton staff on Monday – Wednesday:
The main office will be open but with reduced staff
The Principal and/or the Deputy Principals will be onsite each day
The library and IT centres will be open but with reduced staff

All camps and excursions are cancelled from Monday to Wednesday

The school canteen will be closed for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

The following scheduled events for next week will be affected:
Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday activities will be postponed until the following Tuesday and Wednesday (unless the lockdown is extended)
School photos will go ahead as planned on Thursday (unless lockdown is extended)
Swimming Sports will go ahead on Friday (unless lockdown is extended)

Please do not hesitate to contact the school if you have any concerns for your child’s progress or engagement with the learning process over the coming days.

Regards
Bernard Neal
Principal