Mrs Ryan's Fortnightly Reflections

A warm welcome to everyone for the start of the 2024 year! It has been so lovely to see so many of our families drop off and pick up already this year! A school yard filled with smiling happy faces is a beautiful place to be. I do hope that every family enjoyed their break from school and valuable family time! It is so lovely to see everyone return, happy, healthy and well. 

Our classrooms are well prepared, settled and calm! The children have willingly returned to school, many happy to reconnect with their friends and settle into new learning environments. Our teachers have started each day with prayer and circles to ensure we are connecting and getting to know all learners in front of us. The school is already a calm and welcoming learning environment. 

Our guiding Catholic Education theme for this year is from Revelations 21:5 is, “Behold I make all things new.” Such a powerful scripture message that we are able to live by throughout a school year. Each day a new opportunity to live in the likeness of God and bring new beginnings and learnings to all opportunities. Such a scripture message is an invaluable message that we will nurture the growth and development of our children by. 

This school year we welcome many new people to the St Mary’s community. We welcome many staff, both as teaching staff and educational support staff. This year St Mary’s has a committed workforce of 75 staff and 610 learners! 1:8 staff ratio for our Learners. We have welcomed 90 Foundation learners and 20 new non Foundation starting learners. To start our year we have all teaching positions filled and two learning support to each year level. I am grateful for this and know we are extremely blessed to be in this position. 

Our Foundation learners have now completed one full day of school and have given it their all! Each day they have entered with predominant smiles and our parents have shared repeatedly how happy and positive the start has been! As educators and parents we share the success and triumph here! The cohort on a whole is extremely settled, receptive to the structure of the school day and are establishing trusting relations with their teachers! It lays great foundations for an exciting year ahead. This year St Mary’s is not stipulating a rest day rather for the first month of school leaving the need for a rest day at the discretion of parents. 

Like all beginnings, it does not all go smoothly! I would like to sincerely apologise for the lack of school communication that has started our school year. This has not been our intention and we have been problem solving with ICT support for over a week now. Unfortunately, our ICON (Integrated Catholic Online Network) has not merged new learners and families which in turn has disabled our ability to push out our detailed communication to our school community. Our social media platforms are predominantly used to celebrate and recognise great learning in our school and we were hopeful the issue would have been resolved earlier, avoiding using this platform. We are hopeful by the end of this week that all communication will resume and we can push out forms, dates, curriculum information and also have parents update any new information the school may require. I do again apologise for this and thank you all for your patience. Improving our overall communication is a focus area for 2024 so please know once rectified we hope you see a significant change. 

St Mary’s Family Information 2024 can be found on our website, with current dates and information for our school year ahead. 

Today myself and our leaders had a joyful morning and a shared morning tea with our new non Foundation starting families, a tradition we started last year to get to know our new community members and allow them to connect with others that are entering the school as new learners. These learners were open in sharing what they already enjoy about the school and what has been daunting. Again, they all seemed happy and settled! I look forward to checking in with these new families throughout the term to see how as a whole you are transitioning to St Mary’s. 

This year we are hopeful to engage more regularly and in a variety of ways with our parents around learning. We are strategically planning for opportunities to partner with parents around the education of your child. This consultation is already occurring at a School council level and at a Leadership level. We are wanting our parents to witness many learning journeys throughout the school year and hope to have you involved often. Varying cohorts and teams of teachers will keep you informed throughout the year! 

In 2024 our assembly roster will change. In the past assembly was held every fortnight and moving forward it will be held three times a term. Predominantly the assembly rotation will fall on a Monday in Week 3 and 6 of term with the third assembly falling as the Terrific Kid assembly on the last day of each term.  The 2024 assembly dates can be found in the school information of this newsletter and will be shared on our social media soon. 

St Mary’s will continue to plan, resource and enact our school improvement plan in 2024. The focus areas were also a recommendation of our NSIT review conducted last August. I will refer to the professional learning and direction that support our key focus areas at varying times throughout the year to keep the community informed and aware of change and improvement. This year our overarching focus areas are; 

• Community, Care, Connect 
• Data Informed Practices 
• Engaging & Explicit Curriculum
• Learner Voice & Choice  

I would like to thank you all for supporting your children in what has already been such a positive start to the school year. I know that every parent is the first and most important educator of their child and we are blessed to be able to partner with you, for the very best for your child. Please know that the staff of St Mary’s have each and every learner at the core of all we do and as a community look forward to knowing you and your family better - Celebrating great achievement and joy throughout the school year. 

I wish you all a wonderful school year ahead.

Take care & God Bless, 

Jasmine Ryan 

Principal