Principal's News

Dear Parents, 

We warmly welcome all of our community back to St Mary’s school and look forward to a wonderful year of learning together. We hope every member of our school feels a great sense of belonging and connection and achieves success in all that they set out to do. We warmly welcome all of our new families to our wonderful school.

A special welcome to our new staff: Naomi Corfield, our new Vice Principal replacing the wonderful Sue Jackson, Steven Robinson and Monica Smith, our new class teachers, and Jason Beach, our new music/drama and phys ed teacher. We wish you the warmest of welcomes to our school and hope you enjoy teaching as part of this wonderful team.

Our whole school theme for 2024 is “Be Kind, Be You”. This is based on the picture story book, BE YOU, by Peter Reynolds, along with a focus on our faith of following in the footsteps of Jesus. We show respect and encouragement to all we interact with and work for the common good to ensure every person in our school can shine and flourish. 

Our school vision of Faith, Hope and Love will guide our journey as we ask our students to strive to be respectful, compassionate and inspiring.

We do this by ensuring each student knows how important they are and builds positive belief in themselves, knowing they are unique and can achieve great things. Together, as the adults in our community, we work for the common good of all by respecting the dignity and individuality of everyone in our school. 

Our positive behaviour approach ensures we consistently:

• have high expectations
• come from a base of understanding
• are firm and supportive
• ensure high quality education for all
• have respect for all
• ensure a consistent, strong home school partnership.

We bring our school frameworks alive by focusing on a whole school theme and inquiry. Our inquiry in Term 1 is centred around Identity and Diversity. It is imperative in our school that every student knows themselves well and celebrates who they are and the relationships they build to ensure they flourish and thrive in our care. 

We are thrilled to welcome parents back into our school and look forward to continuing to work in partnership with you throughout 2024.

Our Beginning of the Year Mass will be held on Wednesday 7th February at 2pm. At this Mass, our Year 6 students will receive their leadership badges and staff will be commissioned for the year. This will be followed by a welcome BBQ and we invite all our community to this special afternoon.

Please make sure all students wear their uniform with pride. It is an expectation that students wear full St Mary’s uniform including the correct shoes. We have some funds from our Parishioners if any family requires support with uniforms. All children are to wear their sports uniforms on Thursdays & Fridays for sports and P.E lessons.

I look forward to a wonderful year of learning, strong home school partnerships and ensuring together we will build the conditions and environment that ensures every student at St Mary’s can flourish, thrive and enrich our world in ways unimaginable.

I am so proud to be Principal of this wonderful school. Please do not hesitate to contact me on principal@smhastings.catholic.edu.au if you would like to meet to discuss any aspect of your child’s education.

Finally, we look forward to seeing our building project develop before our eyes. Thank you for adapting the pathways of travel. We will ensure there will be minimal interruption to any learning and we look forward to seeing our senior classrooms, outside student toilets and staff toilets being completed in Stage 1, followed by the 3/4 room and a wonderful discovery room for our students to inquire and flourish in.

Yours in Partnership,

Gab