Principal's Message 

Welcome back to school for 2025! It has been such an incredible and smooth start and everyone seems to have returned ready for great things ahead. It has been so marvellous to have our students back, watch all of our Foundation students settle into school and see our Year Sixes off to camp! 

It is hard to believe almost two weeks have flown past already and all of our students are now settled into their new year levels and classrooms. A huge shout out to our staff for having everything set and ready to go. I am always blown away by how hard our staff work preparing and setting everything up in their rooms ready for day one. 

It has been an exciting start to the year too for our new School Captains for 2025. Already Engy, Astin and Sam have taken to their roles with confidence and excitement! They have been on camp this week, however will soon make a regular ongoing appearance in our newsletter each fortnight. 

A big welcome to our new families, students and staff this year. Our community at ENPS is really something very special, so we hope you all make the most of opportunities to create connections and sense of belonging too. Our VIP open classroom for Year One to Five families was a huge success on Wednesday and I know the teachers are very much looking forward to their Home and School Partnership meetings on Monday 17th February too. Keep an eye out also for our Start of Year Community Picnic coming up on Friday 21st February at Woodlands Park. The picnic is a great way to meet other families, school councillors and to celebrate the start to the school year together.

Staffing Update

We have had a number of new faces join our staff team in 2025. We welcome Hannah Morris (Foundation), Matilda Hewitt (Year One), Laveena Kukanesan (Year Two), Anthea Christofi (Year Three), Jonathan McFarland (Year Five), Zarah Draper and Anastasia Ioannou (Year Six) and Andrew Whitby (PE) to ENPS. Amy Wirth has also continued in our Year One and Two teaching teams, grade sharing in 2CU with Carole Upton (on Mondays) and 1MV with Macalie Vlah (on Tuesdays). 

In the coming weeks we also hope to finalise the substantive classroom teaching position for 1JS (replacing the temporary position for Jemma Strbac Low) for the remainder of the 2025 school year, as well as the replacement teacher for 5EG, as Emma Gallagher begins family leave from the beginning of Term Two. Once the recruitment process has been finalised for these two positions, we will communicate and introduce the incoming teachers.

We have also had our first wedding for the year with Lana Harris (now Thomas) and her partner Robin tying the knot just before school returned. Congratulations to Lana and Robin!  

For your information we have again included the 2025 Staff List in this newsletter for you - this way you get to know who is who and what we all do! 

2025 Community Engagement and Start of School Picnic

Make sure you print a copy of our 2025 Community Engagement Calendar of Events (found in this newsletter) for your fridge at home and save the date for a great variety of events that will happen throughout the year. 

Our first great community event took place this week with our VIP (Very Important Person) and open classroom afternoon. It was fabulous to see lots of family members coming along to meet our teaching staff, see our learning spaces across the school and engage with our learning and teaching from Year One to Year Five. 

Next up is our Start of School Year Community Picnic on Friday 21st February from 3:30pm in Woodlands Park. Our ENPS School Council host this event and everyone is welcome. Bring a picnic dinner, a picnic blanket, chairs and enjoy an afternoon chatting to other parents and staff, while the kids play together. There is no cost involved and you can stay for as long or little amount of time as you like! 

More information to come for all of these events, however if you are keen to be a part of this (or any community engagement event) planning, please contact the office, Tanya Ward or myself directly. Our first Community Engagement Team meeting with our parent volunteers will be coming up in two weeks so we would love to see lots of parents/carers come along! We need everyone’s help to keep our community events happening. See the Community Engagement page in the newsletter for more information. 

Planning Week

Next week, our teaching teams will have their allocated planning day, as a part of Planning Week. Across the week, each year level team will have one day to work collaboratively together planning and preparing for their upcoming unit of inquiry. This means that your child will have all their specialist lessons on the one day, as a way to release the home group teachers. Our planning days happen once a term to support teaching teams with planning time. 

Have a wonderful weekend. It has been a tremendously smooth and positive start to 2025 and we all look forward to a great year ahead! 

Wishing all families that celebrate Lunar New Year a very happy and prosperous Year of the Snake too! I look forward to hearing all about the weekend’s celebrations and hearing the fire crackers and festivities.

Kate Barletta

Principal