Mrs Hartmann has been the ‘heart and soul’ of our primary school for the past 14 years. She has worked tirelessly in bringing families in our school together to build a sense of community and belonging and to fulfill the needs and wishes that have been expressed by the parent population. Mrs Hartmann is dedicated to the growth and development of the school and to her staff. In her long term role as Deputy Principal of our school, we can see the time she has taken, above and beyond her typical day to day duties, to form a relationship with every child and every family, working alongside families and teachers to help in the development of each child’s learning and to help them reach their full potential. We have seen the extra attention and individual time she has taken, to nurture and assist those children who are struggling emotionally, socially and academically and with those families in need of her counsel with her door always open. There are not many schools in this state that you can walk into as a parent (or as an outside visiting specialist), where the Deputy Principal/Principal would be able to refer to every individual child by name, let alone their parent, to see a child’s face light up with familiarity and warmth and to observe such ease in their interaction with someone in an authority position, but that is how Mrs Hartmann relates with our children.

We can also see the strong leadership and unity she brings to the team of staff at the school, supporting them in their ideas, introducing and helping in the development of specialist programmes in the school (notably the STEM, art and performing arts programmes), motivating them with her passion and interacting with them with her unique warmth and humour. Mrs Hartmann has endeavored to improve our children’s learning by integrating effective and evidence based literacy and numeracy programs into their curriculum. Since the school has attained independence, Mrs Hartmann has been involved in selecting a number of talented, creative and energetic teachers and the retention of staff has been excellent; we feel due to the support, guidance and professional development opportunities that she offers them.

It is clear to us that Mrs Hartmann is committed to Goollelal and that she has a clear vision of what she values about our school and what she hopes to continue to develop for our children. In the short time that she held the substantiative position of Principal in 2016 alone she implemented the Preventative Mental Health Programme; The Resilience Donut, initiated a beautification of the school; organising a large scale busy bee to develop nature gardens, the community school kitchen garden and the outdoor classroom (she now has established goals and future directions for many new projects including beginning the establishment of a Sustainability Committee), established the before and after school care programme and the pre-kindergarten parents support group.

Mrs Hartmann has developed strong working relationships and networks with other local primary and high schools in the area and alliances with our local members of parliament who have regularly participated in our community events. She has attracted interest in the programmes that our school offers.

We also acknowledge that Mrs Hartmann played an integral role in formulating the initial submission to the education department to obtain independence for our school.

Show your support for Mrs Hartmann’s application in the petition by signing below and please feel free to add your own personal comments if you would like to.