Thursday's Tidings - 11 July 2024

Dear families,

It’s been an awesome start back to Term 3. Welcome to our new families here at the Gympie Central community. You will find the staff, students and families very warm and welcoming. 

The fence project is progressing and by next week the majority of the fence will be completed. The team from Dog Gone Fencing will move to another project and once an engineering assessment is completed on the School St/O’Connell St boundary, the final section will commence construction. Carpark gates will then be automated and signage installed. Following the completion of the project, access at drop off and pick times will be as normal. However, during school hours access will only be via the administration building on O’Connell St.  

Prep 2025 transition  

Have you added your child to our prep enrolments for 2025? Children born between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020 are prep age next year. Contact Mrs Cross in the office to secure your child’s 2025 enrolment.  

The school will host two prep transition sessions in Term 3 and two in Term 4. Pre-preps and their families are invited to join us here at school to join the classroom activities and start to explore school life. 

The dates of the transitions are: 

NAIDOC Week @ GCSS

The 2024 NAIDOC theme Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud, celebrates the unyielding spirit of our communities and invites all to stand in solidarity, amplifying the voices that have long been silenced. 

This year NAIDOC coincides with the first week of school so Gympie Central will celebrate NAIDOC starting with a parade tomorrow, then activities during lunch breaks for the following week, culminating in the Gympie Family Fun Day: 2pm-8pm Saturday 31 August 2024. 

P&C Uniform policy consultation - Tuesday 16 July 

The school is in the process of consulting with the P&C and school community to formalise the Uniform Policy. School community members are invited to be part of this process by joining us at the next P&C meeting on Tuesday 16 July.  

Navy shorts and skorts available through the uniform shop! 

Navy shorts and skorts can be difficult to find in Gympie. The P&C now has a supply of navy skorts and shorts available for purchase through the QKR! app. 

Pancake Day for Chappy- Thursday 18 July 

Next Thursday morning chappy will be cooking fresh, warm pancakes as a fundraiser for our Chaplaincy program. Pancakes will be available before school and chappy is requesting a gold coin donation. Funds will go toward supporting the lunchtime craft clubs that chappy helps coordinate. 

Did you receive your child’s report card? 

Report Cards were emailed the last week of last term. If you didn’t receive this email, please contact the office to have the report resent. 

Parent/Teacher Interviews - 22 July-9 August 

Parent/Teacher interviews provide families the opportunity to check in with your child/ren’s teacher, follow up the report card and set goals for the remainder of 2024. The interviews are scheduled for Weeks 3, 4 and 5 and are offered before and after school. Next week each teacher will send a letter showing their available times and families book a time by returning the letter to the teacher.   

Annual School Opinion Survey 

The suite of School Opinion Surveys is undertaken each year by the Schools and Student Support Division to obtain opinions about schools from parents/caregivers, students and school staff. The surveys are designed to help schools identify what they do well and find areas which may need improvement. 

The suite of 2024 School Opinion Surveys will be open between 22 July and 16 August 2024. 

We encourage you to take this opportunity to have your say about what our school does well, and how we can improve. 

Gympie Bypass Opening - A message from the Department of Transport 

The Department of Transport and Main Roads is preparing to celebrate the completion of the Bruce Highway Upgrade – Cooroy to Curra, Section D (Gympie bypass) project – and we would like your school community to be a part of it. 

A Community Open Day will be held on Saturday 17 August 2024 between 11am and 4pm to celebrate this major milestone for the Gympie region. It will include entertainment, food stalls (buy your own food and drinks), a 5-kilometre family walk and other exciting activities that they can be involved with. 

We wish to invite your school community to attend this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

If you are interested in attending this event, please complete the registration form here or by using the QR Code on the poster by Friday 12 July 2024. This will help us to gauge how many people may be attending so we can plan accordingly. 

Further details will be provided about the Community Open Day as we get closer to the day. 

We look forward to seeing your school community there. 

Message from our QPS 

The Queensland Police Service are interested to hear about how Wide Bay-Burnett Region residents view issues in their community, and whether there are any ways we might be able to better address their concerns.   

We are implementing a crime and community safety survey to help us better understand what crime and safety issues are of most concern to community and how we can work together to keep community safe.   

Use the QR code on the attached flyer to share your thoughts.

Did you know that the QParents portal is coming soon to Gympie Central SS? The QParents portal will provide secure online access to your child’s student information in one place, anywhere, anytime. To find out more, go to https://education.qld.gov.au/parents-and-carers/school-information/qparents

Parents, if we have your current email address, registration for the QParents app is easy. If you need to update your email address, please send details to admin@gympiecentralss.eq.edu.au.

Warm regards,
Glenn Cafferky

Payment Options

We have a variety of payment options available here at Gympie Central. Our most preferred method of payment is the Qkr! app. Qkr! is a cashless payment app, which means you can make payments on your mobile phone, rather coming into the school. The Gympie Central P&C also use this app, so not only can you pay for camps and excursions, but you can also order school uniforms and tuckshop with the app.

Instructions on how to download and use the app are shown in the link below.

Qkr-instructions.pdf

Qkr-instructions _pdf 1.05 MB

Other payment options that we provide are:

1. BPOINT - (for invoiced activities) Pay online or by phone using credit/debit card: https://www.bpoint.com.au/payments/dete or phone 1300 631 073

2. CENTREPAY - (for invoiced activities) We now offer Centrepay as a payment method for instrumental music and school camps. Use Centrepay to arrange regular deductions from your Centrelink payment. You can start, change or stop using Centrepay whenever you like. If you would like to set up a Centrepay payment, or know more information about this payment method, please contact the school office.

3. EFTPOS - We accept Mastercard, Visa and all Australian bank, building society and credit union cards.

4. CASH - Cash payments are still accepted. However, the school no longer has the ability to give out change, so only cash payments of the correct denomination will be accepted.

QLD FairPlay Vouchers