Principal's Report

Dear Parents and Carers,

Year 6 Student Leadership Badges and Start of Year Mass

Congratulations to our Year 6 Students who received their leadership badges durin Mass on Tuesday.  I am looking forward to working with the Year 6 leaders in 2024! My thanks to Miss India Mitchell-Fletcher our Religious Education Leader for her organisation of the mass and to all who attended and participated.

Year 1 - Year 5 Student Leadership Presentations.

We presented our Year 1 to Year 5 Student Leadership Badges at this weeks' Monday assembly.  The Prep leadership positions will be presented at next weeks' assembly.  I am looking forward to working with the new student leaders across our school.

Parents and Friends Information

We have a lot of events happening at the moment that are being run by our amazing P&F association.  As such, I have set up a dedicated page for P&F information in this newsletter.  

Please see below important information from our Co-Presidents regarding the charter of the class P&F representatives as there has been some confusion regarding the purpose of this group in recent months.

Welcome to all St Patrick's families, especially the new families that have joined our school community in 2024.

The Parents and Friends Committee is a volunteer fundraising group that works closely with our Principal, Pat Berlingeri, to create fun, memorable events for our students to enjoy, whilst raising funds to put towards our amazing school. 

There is a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work to make these events happen, your help and involvement is very important in order to ensure they are successful. Our school community has grown significantly in recent years, therefore, your assistance is appreciated more than ever!!!!!  

Each class has a Class P&F Representative the role is as follows:

• Coordinate and manage two school events per year as advised by the Executive Committee at the beginning of the calendar year.
• Attend quarterly P&F Meetings (Dates listed on the P&F page of this newsletter).
• Keep a current Year level family communication list.
• Report to Committee (when applicable) what events or gatherings planned for year level families.
• Forward to the Committee any feedback from families regarding P&F events.
• Communicate to year level families current information from P&F meetings.
• Coordinate year level appropriate family events and gatherings.
• Stay up to date with the latest notifications by following our social media platforms. 

The Class P&F Representative may also create year level group chats to assist or guide you on basic school questions. Parents should always contact their child’s teacher by email or after school for personal discussions relating to their child - this is not a P&F Representative responsibility.

We further note, you will find that we request prepayment at many P&F events. This is due to the volume of students, parents, carers, and teachers in attendance. Please understand we are trying to coordinate many tasks, therefore, if we can reduce last minute sales it enables a smoother running of events and is imperative for catering purposes. 

Next Meeting - Tues 13th February 7pm  in the school office for all current and new class P&F reps and General committee members. 

As your Co–Presidents of the Parents and Friends Committee,  along with the whole P&F Committee we are very excited to organise some great events throughout 2024. We look forward to seeing you at our next event! 

Thanks,

Maryann Luci (Co-President)

Marie Facciolo (Co-President)

Pat Berlingeri (School Principal)

Social Media Platforms

Our social media platforms are linked in at the bottom of the cover page of this newsletter. Please like and share our pages with the St. Patrick's community to stay up to date with what is happening at our vibrant school.  Our main social media platforms are Instagram and Facebook.  We also have a youtube channel and linkedin profile which are in their early phase of development.  We are currently in the process of updating our school website to a more contemporary format.

Parent - Teacher Exchange

The teachers will be holding information exchange sessions where parents will have the opportunity to pass on valuable information about your child/children. These will begin in Week 4 on Monday 19th February and Wednesday 21st February for students from Year 1-6.  Students from Year 3-6 will be invited to attend these meetings as well. 

Bookings can be made HERE via our online booking system and are now open for families to make their booking.  Bookings will close 24 hours prior to the meeting days.

House Swimming Carnival

Yesterday our Year 3-6 students attended Mentone Grammar for our inter-house swimming carnival.  It was great to see everyone having a go and all the students should be very proud of the way they performed and behaved on the day.  It was very hot in the pool area and I think we were all wishing we could be in the pool.  Congratulations to Green team who won the carnival for the second year running.  

The results were as follows:

1st - Green House

2nd - Gold House

3rd - Blue House

4th - Red House

Special thanks to Mr Colin Edwards who did a great job to organise a carnival so early in the term.  The times from the carnival will now be used to select the Inter-School Swimming Team.   Training will commence next Tuesday 13th at 8am at Mentone Grammar for those selected in the team.

School Canteen Update

I am pleased to announce that our new canteen provider - The Healthy Hut - is now up and running and ready for business starting.  My thanks for your patience as we experienced a few teething issues setting up the platform which was out of our control.  If you are unable to still set up your family account can you please emial then office to let us know ASAP.

Please see below all the information you need to set up your online accounts.  The canteen will operate on Tuesday's and Thursday's for the time being with the option of adding addition days if necessary.  Please note that orders close at 11.00pm on the day before canteen and no orders can be made on the day of canteen.

Direct link to sign up for the online canteen HERE.

Please remember to click on 'New Parent Account' the first time you log in and then follow the instructions!

Kaboom Sports Day

Last week we started our Student Wellbeing week with a visit from the Kaboom Sports group.  It was a fun day for all involved.  Below are some photos and movies from (our youtube site) of the day.  A huge thanks to Mr Daidone, Miss Simioni, Mr Hale, Mrs Pearson, Miss Douglas and Dallas (Yr 6)  for their dancing expertise!  We will definetly be getting the Kaboom Team back next year for more Wellbeing Week fun!

Year 5 & 6 Upcoming Camps

The Year 5 Portsea camp is scheduled for Week 3 of this term on Monday 12th February to Wednesday 14th February.

The Year 6 Canberra Camp is scheduled for Week 6 of this term on Monday 4th March to Friday 8th March.

My sincere thanks to all of the school staff who are attending these camps that enable our students to access these amazing opportunities.

Watch this space for a proposed Year 4 Bike Ed style camp later in the year!

Year 5 Portsea Camp

Next Week our Year 5 students will be attending the Portsea camp.  My thanks to Mrs Diakrousis, the Year 5 staff and our LSO staff for their support of this important event.  Please keep an eye on our social media pages - Instagram and Facebook for regular updates during camp.

Sibling - Prep 2025 Enrolments and Open Days

Sibling Prep enrolments for 2025 are now open and are accessible from our school website or from the office.  Our 'Open Days' are scheduled for Tuesday 27th February, Tuesday 12th March and Tuesday 26th March or by appointment.  As per our enrolment policy, current families will have priority enrolment, followed by baptised catholics in our boundries and then baptised catholics outside our boundries, if we have availablity, we can then accept other enrolments.  We are currently expecting to have 3 Prep classes for 2025 of around 23-24 students per class.  Sibling enrolment interviews will occur at the end of Term 1.  This will enable us to determine how many places we will have avaliable for new families.

School Fees

Please find attached below our 2024 school fee schedule.

School Uniform

We are very proud of our school uniform and we want to thank all families for your support in ensuring the children are wearing it well so far this year. A few reminders for all families:

• The rugby top is only to be worn with the sports uniform.
• Students are to wear white socks with their sport uniform.
• Boys are to wear the school socks with their summer uniform.  Black socks are unacceptable.
• The winter jacket is not to be worn instead of the jumper
• School shoes are to be worn as part of the uniform.  Black runners are not allowed.
• All hair needs to be tied up if it is below the collar.  Hair also is not allowed to be over the face.

We would also like to remind all families to ensure that all items of clothing are labelled.  This will assist us in returning all items of clothing to our students. 

School Calendar

Please use the following google link to add the school calendar to your own calendar for ease of information exchange. School Google Calendar HERE.

God Bless

Pat Berlingeri

Principal