From the Principal

A Night of Nights!!

"It was wonderful to see such a vibrant, engaged community - everywhere I looked, people were having fun, laughing, and catching up." 

wrote Kylie Box from St John's College Dandenong this morning.

Kylie has perfectly summed up the vibe and atmosphere of our Twilight Market. It was a glorious evening and so wonderful to see both current and past families gather for this annual event. The children were having FUN at the free activities organised by staff, others were getting their face painted, or looking for something special to purchase. Once the children were happy with their friends, families were seen relaxing and connecting as well. It was a great evening to enjoy a delicious dinner from the many food vans on offer and sip on a sparking wine or beer and connect.

The choir sang beautifully and it was great to see the audience appreciate their efforts. We also had the wonderful St John's, College choir who soon had us foot tapping and clapping along to their lovely singing. It was a joy to see many of our past pupils in the choir. It was actually sensational to see and hear from both past pupils, past staff and past parents  during the evening.

A great joy is to see our action teams run stalls at the market. Both staff and students were overjoyed by the support they received. This year the funds raised from some of the stalls is going to the Salesian Sisters to help educate children in Samoa and the Solomon Islands.  The wonderful Mini-Vinnies ran a nail saloon and even convinced dads and uncles to get their nail's painted raised enough to educated three children. Joanna and Jasna in the staff BBQ stall made a donation to educate another child. Rita and Grace along with their Social Justice action team were over joyed that they were well supported by the community and were able to raise enough money to educate a further three children!! So we are very proud of our community at St Francis de Sales who have helped our children raise enough money to educate at least seven children. Sister Rochelle who visited our school earlier this year is going to as delighted as we are. This is such a worthy cause. It cost $60 to educate a child for a year. This money will go to help young people who lack the basic and essential resources and cannot afford a proper education. If you would like to make a donation before we present the Sister Rochelle the money raised, send it in an envelope marked Social Justice Donation. Thanks for the difference you have helped our children make.

It was a wonderful night. We thank everyone who came. A big thanks to all those who had a stall. A massive thanks to our wonderful staff who were all on duty after a day of teaching, ensuring  the event was run in a safe and organised way. What a brilliant community we have!!

Operoo has Closed. Nforma has Commenced

This week Operoo transferred our information that was on Operoo back to us in a secured download. Operoo is now closed.

The process to use NForma to access student medial information has commenced. 

This week I have transferred the Operoo information to NForma via a secured download.

NForma is accessing this information to populate your child's medical records. The process has not been easy or straight forward due to the way the files were provided by Operoo. The information is expected to be on Nforma over the weekend. 

We will require parents to look at their child's medical records next week and check that the information transferred is accurate. This is a time to make any changes required. Having accurate records is essential for your child/children's safety and wellbeing. In an emergency, this is what we use. If there is documents or information missing, we will require parents to upload this. It will be vital for parents to do this check and correction by Monday 17 November. Look out for notifications on the school app during the week for any updates.

NForma - Forms will be used to communicate on activities such as excursions that require parent consent as well as to notify our families about events such as incursions. We already use NForma at the school and parents already have the app on their phones so the change over will be easier. We have already commenced using NForma Forms. Once custom groups are set up we will be able to target groups more accurately. We will have this in place for 2026.

If you have not already downloaded the NForma Parent Portal please do this for access to school communication. When you have downloaded the app for the first time you will get a link that will use the Use the gmail address you shared with the school. You will get a temporary password and will need to create one for future use.

Once we have medical information on Nforma we will begin to open up other functions such as First Aid and Absences. We look forward to communicating via the nForma Portal.

If you have any questions, please speak with Christine or Joanna.

Split Fee Arrangements for 2026

Families who wish to arrange split fee accounts between partners are asked to contact the school office immediately so we can set this up in our system. Once we roll over to the new school year, it will be too late to make these changes for 2026. Early notification via an email to admin@sfslynbrook.catholic.edu.au helps ensure accurate billing and a smooth start to the new year. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Christine White

Principal