19 February 2025

Principal News

Introducing our 2025 school captains

I’m Dylan and I’m happy to be one of your School Captains this year. I’m thrilled to meet you all and honoured to have this privilege and responsibility to help make Morningside State School an even more amazing place to be.

I recently moved to Australia from New Zealand and have really been enjoying living in Brisbane. My passions are sport (especially playing soccer and touch footy) and music (singing and playing the guitar) but I’m always keen to try new things.

Feel free to come and say hi and let’s have a chat. Looking forward to an incredible 2025!

Hi, my name is Jake and I’m your School Captain for 2025. I’m excited to meet all of you who I haven’t yet met. I’m also excited to help you all. I’m looking forward to a great year!

Hi, I’m Eliza. I am so excited to be a School Captain, working with my other captains to make a fun and awesome school world. I love to play soccer and I love riding horses. I have two cute golden retrievers and a 13-year-old sister, who was a Sport Captain. I am so excited to see you around the school.

Hi, my name is Savannah, and as you may or may not know, I am one of MSS’s lucky School Captains for 2025. Let me tell you a bit about myself. I am a sporty person and love all sports but mostly soccer, touch and running. I have an older sister and an energetic 2-year-old kelpie called Gypsy. I’m so grateful for this position as one of your leaders. Here’s to a wonderful school year.

Senior toilets are open

Our students are super excited to be using these fabulous facilities.

Positive behaviour for learning (PBL) individual student acknowledgement system

At Morningside, we explicitly teach children the behaviours that will help them to learn positively and engage at school. These behaviours are referred to as our R.I.S.E. (Respect, Inspire, Support and Effort) behaviours. We have a process in place to then acknowledge students when they are displaying R.I.S.E. behaviours. Please see attached the updated Acknowledgement Charts.

Stop Drop Go Zone on Pashen Street

Parents are reminded that there is a “Loading Zone” on Pashen Street in front of the school gates near the Prep playground. This means, between 7am – 9am and 2pm – 4pm on school days parents cannot park in this zone and leave their car. The intention of the zone is to allow cars to pull in so that children can enter or leave their vehicle and for the car to then leave. The maximum time a car can be in the zone is 2 minutes. To allow the zone to operate smoothly we request that parents do not park in the zone for more than 2 minutes or leave their car. The Police and Council regularly patrol this zone and will give infringement notices to drivers not following the road rules.

Parent information nights

Last week we held our Prep – Year 6 Parent Information nights and it was great to be able to reconnect with our continuing and new families. If you weren’t able to make the night, please check your emails for the presentations that our teachers created to communicate what will be happening in your child’s class this year. Please contact your child’s teacher if you did not receive the presentation.

From time to time, issues may come up regarding your child. We always encourage parents to firstly raise their concerns with their child’s class or specialist teacher.

Kind Regards,

Sheryl Kennedy
Principal

Deputy News

NAPLAN

The NAPLAN test window begins on Wednesday 12 March. To remind students of the online interface the NAPLAN Public Demonstration Site may be useful: https://nap.edu.au/naplan/public-demonstration-site
I have included the parent information brochure for you to read also. In the coming weeks students will complete a practice test and the final schedule for our school’s NAPLAN tests will be put out.

Class Captains

Our Class Captains received their badges at assembly last week. Congratulations to all our wonderful Class Captains for
Term 1.

School Leaders

At assembly this week we acknowledged our Year 6 School leaders for 2025. Congratulations to our leaders. I look forward to working with you all over the year.

Adam Gilmore
Deputy Principal

Dates to Remember

Administration

Parent Liaison Officer

Parent Representatives

We are looking for parents to volunteer as the Parent Rep for their child’s class. We have one Parent Rep per class.
The role of the Parent Rep is mainly to convey information to other parents in the class. This may involve information regarding school events, reminders or even organising a play in the park after school.
I will supply the Parent Rep with a list of parent emails for the children in your class. The Parent Rep will receive information in template form that can easily be forwarded to your parent email list.
Please contact your child’s teacher directly if you would like to express interest in volunteering for the Parent Rep role.

Tracey Claydon – tclay58@eq.edu.au
Parent Liaison Officer

Picking up children during break time or assembly

If you are picking up your child during break time, please advise the office or your child’s teacher beforehand. It can be difficult to locate a student while on the oval or in the play area which may lead to a delay in the student making their way to the office.

Morningside State School break times are:
First break:         10.45am - 11.30am
Second break:   1.30pm – 2.10pm

Also, if you are planning to pick up your child during assembly (Monday afternoons between 2.10pm and 2.50) please advise the office or your child’s teacher beforehand. While students are attending assembly, it may be difficult to find them or get a message through to them.

Communication from the school

We encourage all parents to download and use the QParent App and the Szapp App.

QParent App

This app is a very helpful tool with which you can easily read or download report cards, notify of absences, see outstanding invoices and pay invoices.

Our office staff will be happy to help with the registration process, should you require assistance. 

Szapp App

We are communicating through this app with families and inform about upcoming events, changes or send out reminders.

Payment reminder:

Outstanding invoices / amounts can be found on the QParent app and can be paid through the app.

Student Resource Scheme, Camps and Excursion Payment Reminder

Payment reminder:

Payments can be made as follows:

• Selecting the payment link at the bottom of your invoice
• BPoint - the Bpoint code is 1002534
• QParents
• Direct deposit (BSB 064136, Account 00090111, Account Name Morningside State School) – please note student’s full name
• Credit card payment over phone via a secure BPoint number on 1300 631 073
• Directly at office
• Centrepay – Centrepay is a voluntary bill-paying service which is free for Service Australia customers. Use Centrepay to arrange regular deductions from your Services Australia payment.  You can start or change a deduction at any time. The quickest way to do it is through your Services Australia account online. Go to servicesaustralia.gov.au/Centrepay for more information.

Harmony Week 2025 – Heads Up!

Harmony Week (17 March to 23 March inclusive), is a time to celebrate Australia’s cultural diversity.  Harmony Day is about inclusiveness, respect and a sense of belonging for ALL Australians, regardless of cultural or linguistic background, united by a set of core Australian values.

How is MSS going to celebrate this special week?

Harmony Postcard competition – Our wonderful Arts Captains are running a Harmony Day inspired ART COMPETITION to create our new PBL Postcards that will run until 3pm on Friday 14 March 2025.  A special box in which to place entries will be located in the office.  Flyers will be displayed around the school shortly!!

Free Dress Day – Monday 24 March 2025.  Students are invited to wear ORANGE or INTERNATIONAL DRESS/CULTURAL COSTUME to celebrate the rich ethnic and cultural diversity at our school.  The colour ORANGE signifies social communication and meaningful conversations. It also relates to the freedom of ideas and encouragement of mutual respect. 

Harmony Assembly – Monday 24 March 2025.   The Arts Captains will announce the winners of the postcard competition and Mr Allen’s choir will lead the school in song to celebrate Harmony Week.

Invitation to Families – Digital Captains will be putting together a special video compilation which will be viewed at our Harmony Assembly.  As part of this, again in 2025, families are invited to take pictures with flags, wearing cultural dress or holding signs with hello in your home language to be included.  Send any photos to jkwal0@equ.edu.au for inclusion in this year’s Harmony week celebrations.

We all belong at MSS.  Thank you for your support.

2025 Harmony Committee
Ms Young, Sensei Silby, Mrs Sharma, Arts and Digi Media Captains

Environment News

Welcome to 2025! The Environment Team – an enthusiastic group of students, teachers, staff, parents and grandparents – is looking forward to another green year at MSS! For anyone new to the school or in need of an update, I’ve provided a few key details about what we do.

Sustainability Partner role?

This is a role unique to MSS and it’s thanks to the vision and passion that the school leadership team have for engaging students in environmental / sustainability activities. This includes, biodiversity garden planning, waste management, and supporting other sustainability initiatives. I work at the school on Friday mornings for 2-4 hours and help classroom teachers with environmental or sustainability-themed lessons. From planting seeds and looking after worms, to doing waste audits – there are many opportunities to learn.

Pick of the Crop Program

In 2024 and 2025 we have received funding from Metro South Health to run this program. There are many different elements, all aimed at encouraging children to eat more fruit and vegetables. As part of this in 2024, our Year 4s participated in a Patch from Scratch City Farm Workshop with local author, educator and artist, Megan Forward.

Megan’s feedback was, “We had a lovely day together, exploring sustainability, growing food, recycling, scientific drawing, painting, and combining and tasting fruit and veggies. Thank you for this opportunity to share with your school.” She also passed on these beautiful photos. Stay tuned for more exciting updates about this program!

Join Us in 2025

We welcome anyone from the school community to be part of the Environmental team. It is wonderful to have Farmer John, a proud grandfather, coming in regularly to work with our Prep / Yr. 1 students in their own veggie patch. Other members of the school community are very welcome to be involved in our work too, this could include:

• Looking after the veggie and herb gardens
• Composting and worm farm care
• General garden maintenance – weeding, watering, trimming and tidying
• Supporting our recycling efforts in collection of e-waste, stationery, batteries and blister packs
• Helping us spread the word – writing newsletter articles, developing signage and working on activities to raise awareness of environmental issues.

If you are interested in being involved, please get in touch with me at swetz4@eq.edu.au

Sharon Wetzig
MSS Sustainability Partner

Brisbane City Council – Safer Schools Program

Chappy News

P&C News

Morningside Flyers Swimming Club

Please mark your calendars for our club nights:

Tuesday 4 March
Morningside Flyers Club Night

Tuesday 11 March 
Morningside Flyers Club Night

Tuesday 18 March
Morningside Flyers Club Night

Sunday 23 March
Morningside Flyers Club Championships

This term we are delighted to have been invited to participate in the Cannon Hill Three Way Carnival, against Cannon Hill Dolphins and Norman Park Dolphins. Our swimmers have been preparing to represent Flyers at the event this coming Saturday 22 February. It should be a fantastic day of racing, and we look forward to seeing our Flyers in action!

Our last club night for this season is on Tuesday 18 March. The countdown is on to our end of season Club Championships event on Sunday 23 March followed by our end of season Presentation Celebration a week later on Sunday 30 March - mark your calendars! More detail will be shared to our members in the coming weeks. 

Jasmine Kelly

OSHC News

McKinley Swift - MSS OSHC Director
oshc@msspandc.com.au
0403 631 230

Tuckshop

The Snack Shack welcomes everyone back for 2025. We are looking for volunteers for various roles and times, did you know even grandparents, aunts and uncles can also help too but you are required to have a volunteer blue card. If you think you could help out in any way, please email june.burfoot@msspandc.com.au.

Please make sure that you have updated your students' class on QKR.

Unfortunately, the availability of volunteers has impacted the menu offered currently, so please see below the new menu offered at the Snack Shack

June Burfoot
Convenor

Community News

Tennis for kids

TENNIS HOT SHOTS – ENROLMENTS NOW OPEN FOR TERM 1 2025!

Limited places are still available for Term 1 tennis lessons and Fixture Leagues.  

ENROL ONLINE at www.tennisforkids.com.au  

PRIVATE AND SEMI-PRIVATE LESSONS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

Should you have any questions please contact Tennis for Kids on info@tennisforkids.com.au or 0408 187 741. 

ALL NEW CHILDREN ENROLLING IN TERM 1 WILL RECEIVE A FREE JUNIOR TENNIS RACQUET!

Tennis For Kids is a FairPlay activity provider and therefore can accept Government FairPlay Vouchers - www.qld.gov.au/fairplayvouchers - please email us if you wish to use your voucher towards enrolment.

Shake N Stir

Hampton Swim School

We are so proud to be supporting with Morningside State School’s School Swimming and it’s great to see so many enthusiastic and exited swimmers!

If your child would like to boost their confidence and water safety ready for school swimming, we offer additional learn to swim lessons from the pool at Morningside State School, and at a venue in Cannon Hill. We pride ourselves on a gentle and nurturing approach to learning with our fun, friendly and much-loved teachers, who are trained in our unique Hampton teaching philosophies and methods.

We are delighted to offer the first three lessons free for new families joining us (excludes the registration fee). To find out more, please give our friendly team a call on (07) 3399 2004 or email enrol@hamptonswimschool.com.au.

To find out more about our swim program and swim levels, please visit hamptonswimschool.com.au

Southside Eagles

Southside Eagles Football Club is excited to launch the 2025 season! Expressions of interest for all 2025 teams are now open. Details for each competition and team are live on the website.
www.southsideeagles.com

Bulimba Hockey Club

Australian Girls’ Choir

Australian Girls’ Choir Open Day

Look no further than the Australian Girls’ Choir (AGC) because we encourage, challenge and inspire girls as they learn to sing, dance and perform. School aged girls are invited to come along to our February Open Day to try our fun and inclusive classes and learn more about being part of the AGC! Please visit our website to register to attend our free Open Day: ausgirlschoir.com.au/joinagc

Bulimba Riverside Rugby

Our U6 and U7 teams are playing a new non-contact game this year with the introduction of Tri Tag! 
We have teams in all age groups and also, our 3-5 year olds can train in our Sharkies club. 
For older kids, we have teams right up to U15s (our U14s won the Division 1 comp in 2024!!) 

Brisbane School Handball Competition

Easts Juniors

2025 Season Sign-On Day!
Sunday, 23rd February
9 AM – 1 PM
Easts Juniors
Get ready for an epic season with Easts Juniors!
Pre-register online before Friday, 21st February to speed up the process.
New players can get registration assistance on the day.
Meet your coach, grab your uniform, and get all your training details!
Sausage Sizzle for a Cause!

Thanks to our amazing sponsor, Hanno's Country Butchery, we’ll have a delicious sausage sizzle for a gold coin donation, with all proceeds going to Heart Kids

Bring the whole family and kick off the 2025 season with us!