Dear Families,

A very warm 2024 welcome to everyone at St Mary’s Primary School. We are so excited to be starting the new year and have so many wonderful opportunities planned for this year. Of course the heartbeat of a school is always the children and it was with great joy and excitement that we saw the return of our beautiful students yesterday. It was great seeing the pride in which they wore their uniforms when walking through the gate. Thank you for ensuring that full uniform is worn, hair tied back and correct black school shoes worn. I look forward to hearing about everyone’s holidays, chatting with parents and carers at the gates and sharing our plans for this year. Dare I say there were a few delighted parents saying goodbye to their children at the driveway drop off yesterday morning! We especially welcome those families who are new to our community, the Hrycaiczuk, Kathpal, Kozyrev and Lewis families.

Welcome to our 2024 Preps

Our Prep students are very settled and already looking very much at home. We congratulate them on their first day. We warmly welcome our Prep students and their families; Annabelle, Theodore, Mischa, Evie, Henryk, Lisa, Luca, Oran, Eleanor, Leo, Oscar, Zachary, Rose, Carter, Michael-Angelo, Robert and Amira to our St Mary’s community.

Last year, as part of the Prep Orientation program the Year 4s met their buddies. These Year 4 students have now stepped into the senior part of the school and are to be congratulated for the care and support they have already given their buddies. They are an integral part of our Preps being so settled at school. Together they will share many buddy activities throughout the year and care for their buddies in the playground.

Another special part of our Prep journey at St Mary’s is receiving a Mary Bear. These bears form an important part of our Social and Emotional learning in Prep and will be a special memento in years to come. Each bear is unique and loved by our students. We thank Francesca's (Year 3) grandmother Glenice who has been hard at work making these for our students.

Welcome to our 2024 New Staff Members

We also welcome our new staff members: Jacqui Braun (Physical Education Teacher) for Prep to Year 6 and Michelle Botwood who joins our hard working Learning Support Officers team.

Holiday Projects

Over summer we have worked hard on our improvement agenda and are excited to share our ‘new’ staff room kitchen with you all. Steve May, our amazing Maintenance Officer who works so hard for our school came across a kitchen being pulled out including appliances that were going to be thrown out and was able to adapt it to our staff room space. We are so proud of our wide oven, hot plates and pantry. It will be fantastic being able to cook with our students and to be able to cook and heat food for events. The staff really enjoyed their hot lunch on Monday and Tuesday.

Steve is also in the process of making the space outside the Yr5/6 classrooms an outdoor reading/learning space. Whilst it is not complete you can see the work is in progress.

Heinz (thank you so much), Anthony and myself worked with Paul Pritchard from Paul Pritchard Landscapes as we plotted a timeline for the jobs required from our landscape plans to prepare the side garden beds for planting in early winter. Together with the P & F these dates will be organised and then advertised in our next newsletter. We know everyone will help with this project, to make our school even better. We are hoping to have these working bees 3:30 - 6:00pm on a few Friday evenings throughout the semester. Steve will lead the working party and do some of the heavier work behind the scenes. We look forward to bringing these plans to fruition this year.

Over the holidays we have had our server updated to ensure faster connectivity for our digital infrastructure and Erica has an upgrade of her desktop. Our cleaners Blazia and Dragan have steam cleaned our carpets and cleaned all of our windows and glass surfaces to ensure our learning environment is the best it can be. We thank them for their hard work.

Year 3 1:1 Devices

Our new devices for our Year 3 and new students are currently being prepared to be rolled out and we thank Anthony and Daniela for enabling this. All of our staff have been working hard in late January to ensure that we are ready for the new year. This work ethic results in a calm, organised and positive feeling to the school.

Upcoming Events

If I could strongly encourage you to read the newsletter each fortnight, as this is our main form of communication. We include important dates, upcoming events and student highlights.

These next two weeks the classrooms will have a wellbeing welcome focus across the school. The students will develop their relationships with the teachers, Learning Support Officers, and peers. The routines, structure and expectations of each class are explicitly taught, established and enacted.

Under the guidance of Mrs Perri, our Art Teacher, each student and staff member will be a part of our exciting display in the foyer. The surprise will be worth waiting for. Our clubs have started up and if you would like to join Chess or Taekwondo please see our community page. Hywell is able to offer our Crochet Club again this year. This will be on a Monday at lunch time. We thank her very much for this, as our crochet club loves it, myself included. Mr Speranza has purchased some exciting items for our Zen Zone and together with the SRC students will share this with the community.

This afternoon we have swimming trials at Prahran Pool and thank Mrs Mason and Mrs Braun for organising these.

Sausage Sizzle - Tomorrow (Friday) 3:30pm

Tomorrow we are excited to be sharing a sausage in bread and an icy pole to celebrate the start of the year. This is a combined P & F and school initiative and we look forward to seeing all family members there. Please see the invitation on the P & F page.

2024 Opening of the School Year Mass

Next Sunday on 11th February at 5:30pm we are having our Opening Mass. Families are invited to pack a picnic to have in Alma Park afterwards. This picnic is weather dependent and we hope for sunshine this year! Our Year 6 students will have their leadership badges blessed and presented to them at this special Mass. We look forward to seeing you all there. The Year 6 2024 rugby jumpers will be presented at assembly next Friday 9th February. Parents very welcome to attend.

On Monday together with the new Principal Darren Atkinson and staff at St Mary’s College, we celebrated Mass followed by morning tea. The focus of this Mass was on the importance of our community of faith as we bring forward the light of faith. We continue in the tradition of Nano Nagle, Edmund Rice, the Presentation Sisters and Christian Brothers, who were committed to the mission of Jesus. The most important thing is knowing God and his love. In his homily Father Jerome spoke to us about the importance and privilege of participating in the project of education. “The beginning of the year is a good time to lift our eyes and realise just how huge a responsibility this is and therefore how wonderful the profession and vocation of guiding young minds is”.

In this light it was wonderful to celebrate 2024 Senior Australian of the Year: Yalmay Yunupiŋu. Her passion for literacy and linguistics is to be celebrated. I look forward to learning more about her and the work she has undertaken.

2024 Open Morning

We look forward to sharing our wonderful school with new families from 9:30-11:00am on:

27th February

6th March

29th April

23rd May

Visitors can register via the following link.

This year we will all continue to work together to grow our school, ensuring that our students get the best learning experiences and environment that we can provide. I look forward to chatting with you all before and after school, seeing you at Mass next Sunday and at our Welcome Drinks on Friday 23rd February.

Shared Learning

Year 2s are learning about themselves and the qualities they are proud of.

2024 St Mary’s Primary School Staff

Fr Jerome Santamaria	Parish Priest
Thien Nguyen	Parish Secretary
Cathy Ferrari	Principal
Anthony Speranza	Deputy Principal
Erica Nastopoulos	Admin & Finance
Katherine Reade	Library Assistance (Tues) & Office Assistance (Fri)
Leadership Team
Angela Mason	Literacy Leader & Literacy Intervention Co-ordinator
Daniela Borgese	Prep Junior Literacy Leader, eLearning & Marketing Leader
Catherine Le Hunt	Learning Diversity Leader & Maths Leader & Maths Intervention
Classroom Teachers	Daniela Borgese - Prep B (Rosemary Perri - Thurs) Naomi Raffaele - Year 1R Jacquie Fleming - Year 2J Aoife McGuinness - Year 3M Maureen McDonald- Year 4M (Rosemary Perri - Fri) Angela Mason - Year 5/6M (Catherine Le Hunt - Thurs) Denise Santamaria - Year 5/6D
Specialist Team
Rosemary Perri Jessica Earle	Art (Mon & Tues) Performing Arts & Education in Faith (Mon, Wed & Thurs)
Carmel Vozzo	Italian (Mon & Tues)
Jacqui Braun	Physical Education P - 6 (Wed & Thurs)
LSO Team
Huda Abiad	Supporting Yr 1& Year 3
Sarah D’Mello	Supporting Yr 5
Michelle Botwood	Supporting Yr 4
Kat Reade	Supporting Yr 5
Justin Buttigieg	Supporting Yr 5 & 6

Take care and wishing God's blessings and peace upon each of you.

Mrs Cathy Ferrari

2025 & 2026 Enrolments and Tours

Mrs Cathy Ferrari