CEB COVID Response Team

Ange Jones – Assistant Director: People and Development and COVID Response Coordinator

Tom Sexton – Executive Director, Catholic Education Ballarat

Matt Byrne – Deputy Director: Catholic Education

Megan Ioannou – Deputy Director: Stewardship

Paul Jans – Assistant Director: Business Services

Eugene Dalton – Education Consultant: Southern Zone (for Term 1)

Lee Schlooz – Education Consultant: Central Zone (for Term 1)

Murray Macdonald – Education Consultant: Northern Zone

Tim O'Farrell – Education Consultant: Secondary Schools

Sue Paulka – Leader: Learning and Teaching

Tony Perkins – Leader: Wellbeing

Maree Baker – Manager: Human Resources

Simon O'Brien – Compliance and Risk Advisor

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Executive Director's Update to Principals #51: COVID Update - 13 Aug 2021

Strength for this Challenging Time

We pray for your love and compassion to abound
as we walk through this challenging season.
We ask for wisdom for those who bear the load
of making decisions with widespread consequences.
We pray for those who are suffering with sickness
and all who are caring for them.
We pray for misinformation to be curbed
that fear may take no hold in hearts and minds.
As we exercise the good sense that you in your mercy provide,
may we also approach each day in faith and peace,
trusting in the truth of your goodness towards us.

Updated School Operations Guide

The Term 3 School Operations Guide has been updated today and is available to download from CEVN. A summary of pertinent changes is below.

Camps and excursions

School camps and overnight stays for regional Victorian schools can take place within regional Victoria. Bookings of camps venues must be limited to single schools. Camp venues can only accept multiple schools attending at the same time if they can guarantee school groups will remain separated and will not share common facilities at the same time. Mixing of staff and students between different schools is not recommended. See page 12 for further details.

School productions and other events

In regional Victoria, school productions or other events held in an entertainment or function (e.g. theatre), community (e.g. community hall) or creative arts (e.g. music room or studio) facility can operate under the requirements of the Restricted Activity Directions (Regional Victoria).

The facility may be on a school premises or an external venue. Schools and external venue operators should familiarise themselves with the current directions as applicable to the venue type.

A summary of the current Restricted Activity Directions (Regional Victoria) for entertainment facilities (e.g. a theatre, music hall, concert hall or auditorium) is on pages 14 and 15.

Limit school access to outside visitors where possible

Principals are best placed to make decisions regarding what visitors are essential to the operation of their school, noting the following:

Within regional Victoria, schools should review the Authorised provider and authorised worker list when making decisions regarding the suitability of staff or workers that reside in metropolitan Melbourne (other than those directly involved in the care and supervision of students). Only workers or volunteers permitted under the Authorised provider and authorised worker list to work in metropolitan Melbourne are able to travel to regional Victoria for work purposes.

Essential visitors include for example:

Health and wellbeing staff
Parish Priests

See page 27 for details.

Cross-border permits

Residents of the cross-border community local government areas will now be required to obtain a cross border extreme risk zone permit to cross between Victoria and NSW from 6.00pm Friday 13 August and must have an approved reason to travel.

If they have a permit, staff and students from the Cross-Border Community Area can still cross the Victorian-NSW border for the purposes of work or education (which includes childcare or early childhood services as well as universities and TAFEs etc).

See page 30 for more details.

Updated COVIDSafe Plan and COVID-19 Safety Risk Review templates

The templates for the COVIDSafe Plan and COVID-19 Safety Risk Review have been updated and are available on the CEVN website. The templates have been updated to reflect the changes made by the latest update of the School Operations Guide.

Templates for correspondence regarding COVID-19 vaccinations

A number of schools have received correspondence from parents regarding the vaccination of students and staff.

Because this is a controversial topic within our community, template letters have been created to help schools correspond with parents on this subject.

There are two templates now available on CEVN:

If you receive correspondence regarding vaccinations that these templates do not cover, please contact your Education Consultant for assistance.

CEB COVID Support Contacts

In the left hand column of all COVID Updates you will now find a list of CEB COVID Support Contacts and their area of expertise for quick reference.

Next COVID Update

We will continue to monitor the situation and advise principals of any updates. Please liaise with your Education Consultant with any questions or concerns.

Stay safe and continue to look after each other…

Ever blessings.