Newsletter 21 07 2023

Street Trees
This year in School Council we welcomed the planting of the four new trees on Kirkdale and Fransfield Grove.  These trees have significantly improved the environment around our school and we look forward their future blossoming and protecting us from the nitrous dioxide from the traffic fumes from Kirkdale.  A big thank you to the KG Circle who made a donation to Street Trees for Living, who sourced and planted the trees.  Thanks also goes to the Scouts Group who meet in our school building, who have taken on the responsibility of watering the trees as part of their badge work. 

Active Travel and Clean Air
Many discussions have taken place about how busy the roads are around our school and the impact this has on our health and wellbeing.  It was concluded that it would be better for our health and the environment if children were able to come to school in more active ways.    Children said that when they come to school in the car it feels more stressful as they are often late and get stuck in traffic. 

We carried out traffic surveys on different days and different times and discovered that between 10 and 46 vehicles pass our school, on Kirkdale, every minute.  It goes without saying that the busiest times are at the beginning and the end of each school day. We talked about how this makes it more dangerous for children who are walking to school.  As part of Clean Air Day, we carried out hands up survey to find out how children come to school.  We discovered that only 54% of children walk to school.  We have installed air quality monitors to record the levels of a polluting gas, known as nitrogen dioxide and these will give us an indication of how bad the pollution is around our school.

Making improvements to our school site
We were joined by Bryan Strom, governor and architect, who supported us in looking at our school site and evaluating how the spaces we used.  We have been looking at how we can improve the biodiversity of our school and make our school site ‘greener’ and more sustainable.  Children are keen for there to be more plants and more opportunity for plants to grow around the school.  We also met with KG Circle and put forward proposals on how our play and learning spaces can be improved in a sustainable way and the impact this would have on children and their learning experiences.  We hope that some of our suggestions will inform future plans.

Foodwaste
We are also celebrating our success in encouraging Lewisham Council to collect our foodwaste.  Like food waste collected from Lewisham’s homes, school food waste is now sent for anaerobic digestion and converted into renewable energy and fertiliser.

Eco Warriors
The Eco Warriors helped maintain the cleanliness of the school grounds and ensuring that we have a healthy environment.  They worked hard litter picking and making sure that plants in the planters were watered regularly in the hot weather. 

I look forward to new welcoming new School Council representatives being elected in September.