From Our Principal

Newsletter  ~ Term 2, Week  5, 2024

Principal's Message:

Dear Parents, Carers, Families and Friends of St Mel’s Primary School,

As we approach the halfway point of Term Two, we turn our focus to the remaining weeks of learning as we continue to support our children engage in school, participate in the learning experiences offered and celebrate their achievements. We are also heading closer towards late Autumn and Winter, with potentially cooler, wet days approaching and more time spent inside together. This brings challenges and opportunities we face with optimism, energy and positivity.

Our children participating in the final stages of their Sacramental journey this year celebrate their Confirmation and First Eucharist this Sunday in our church. Fr Rene will celebrate this special occasion with our children, children from St. Anne's College, their families, friends, parishioners and staff of both parish schools. This Sunday is truly a day of great celebration. Please keep our children and their families in your thoughts and prayers.

Celebrating Our Mothers & Special People:

Our St Mel's Parent Social Committee has been busy of late preparing for last week's annual Mothers' Day Stall and Mothers' Day High Tea. Both events a huge success from the planning and work of a small, yet expanding group of parent and staff volunteers. Thank you to those involved in these events which have provided such joy to our children, their mothers, grandmothers, nonnas, grans and special people in their lives. We hope these special people enjoyed a lovely Sunday.

Special mention also to our Year 6 Leaders who were outstanding in their support of the Mother's Day High Tea, welcoming guests, serving food, tea & coffee, caring for pre-school children, interacting with our guests and cleaning up after the event. It was very heartening to see these year six students in action. Well done leaders!

Junior Sports:

Last Saturday morning, I took an opportunity to attend junior soccer and netball at the North Shepparton Sports Precinct to catch some of the on-field and on-court action. This was a good opportunity to see our children enjoying their weekend sports, being supported by our parent/carer and staff volunteers.  Thank you to our volunteers for the time, energy and commitment to supporting our children play the sports they love. Best wishes for the season ahead.

I am conscious we have children involved in a range of activities and sports outside school hours where they shine and have fun. A number of these children have shared their achievements with us at school e.g., aerobics, ballet, athletics, dance, arts. Please encourage your child to let their teachers, Learning Support Officers, school friends and class mates know of these activities. Any opportunity we have to celebrate our children and their achievements is worth doing so!  

Welcome to Our New Leader: Learner Diversity & Pastoral Wellbeing:

Whilst we continue to seek teachers to join our staff team, especially in our Physical Education specialist area and Classroom Relief Teaching, we welcome our new Leader: Learning Diversity & Pastoral Wellbeing, Di Walker, to St Mel's next week. Di commences in her new role with us on Monday. I look forward to introducing Di to our staff team and broader community in the days and weeks ahead as she settles into her new role.

Ongoing Review and Renewal:

In support of ongoing renewal and development of our school organisational systems and practices we are currently reviewing our Child Safe Policy & Procedures, Emergency Management Plan and Procedures, Occupational Health & Safety and other related areas. This has involved engaging outside providers to review our systems and procedures, train staff and provide materials. On Wednesday our school and the St Mel's Kindergarten conducted lockdown and evacuation drills to test our updated procedures. Our children and staff team have responded very calmly and efficiently to the drills, which are an important aspect of general safety.

SIMON / PAM outage:

Apologies again for the interruption to our SIMON / PAM system this week, which was due to a technical issue outside of our control. Whilst we do not expect further issues with this system, in future in the event of a repeat issue, if you have any queries or need to report absences, please contact our office via the email office@smshepparton.catholic.edu.au or by calling our Administration staff at 58213163. 

For queries or messages related to learning, excursions, or our swimming program, please feel free to reach out to your child's pastoral group teachers via email.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked this week to resolve this unexpected situation. We are also currently exploring alternative methods of communicating with our families to avoid this situation in the longer term recurring.

Thank you for your ongoing support of your children and our school.

Kind regards,

Stephen 'Steve' Hicks

Principal