Dear Parents and Carers,

A very warm welcome back to Term 4. I hope that you have all been able to enjoy the sunshine that Spring is bringing us and you all had a great Term 3 holiday break. I personally had a great, restful and productive one.

Our family made the most of the holiday break with movies, sleepovers with friends, ice skating, go-karting, zoos and more. I got in some landscaping and cleaning around the yards, preparing for summer and even sanded back and re-stained my outdoor furniture. It was also the first school holidays since I have been principal at St Mary’s that was not jam packed with work tasks to complete, though we did complete some great additions to the school yard over the break, more on those later.

Term 4 is always the busiest term of the school year with lots of events, celebrations and key learning to complete before the academic year draws to a close. This term we look forward to the upcoming Grandparents morning, the culmination of our school fundraising efforts for 2025 in the SMAV Colour Run and Sportathon Day, St Mary’s Networking Lunch, a number of excursions across our grades, Swimming Lessons, Music Recital Concerts, G@S end of year function, SMFASS golf day, Grade 6 Funfields celebration day and Grade 6 Graduation. Lots of great events and experiences for our community to enjoy.

Upgrades to St Mary’s School Grounds

I’m incredibly pleased that we were able to complete the resurfacing and installation of new basketball/netball rings and poles over the holiday break. It meant that our students were able to come back to a smooth, safe and vibrantly painted playspace after their time away. I was also able to negotiate in a full size tennis net that has already been put to great use by Eamonn and the visiting tennis coach during PE lessons. It puts a big smile on my face seeing the students use and enjoy this space.

A big thank you to the team at EasyTurf for delivering such a great result for our school. Please check them out if you are interested in their services, they complete residential work also. They are the same company that completed our Soccer Pitch resurfacing and goal installation and once again they delivered on time, on budget and a great result for our students.

Alongside the basketball court resurfacing SMFASS were able to coordinate and install the popular GaGa Pit outside the grade 3 rooms. A big thank you to Justin McInerney and Ryan Gray who gave up their time and employed their expertise to construct the structure, they did an amazing job and might have found a new side hustle! It sure has been put to great use and there is a rumour that there will be a Teachers vs Students end of year GaGa tournament before the year is out.

Our school community is an incredibly active one and I am pleased to be able to reflect on the enhancements we have made to the school yard. Resurfacing the Turf with the addition of soccer and footy goals in late 2023, introducing portable soccer goals to create another play space in 2025, resurfacing and repairing the basketball court with new backboards and rings in 2025 and the installation of a GaGa pit in 2025 also. There is now a great variety and number of play spaces for our students to enjoy on their breaks from learning. Couple this with the refurbishment of the Roseberry St buildings that begun in 2024; including 4 classrooms, the administration building, First Aid room, Meeting and office spaces and I am pleased with the current state of the school's facilities for our community to use and enjoy. These projects and improvements would not have been possible without the support of the St Mary's community and MACS. Thank you.

I’m sure I’ll find something else to improve in 2026.

St Mary’s Colour Run and Sportathon 2025

A huge thank you to our community for their amazing fundraising efforts that will go towards covering the considerable cost of the basketball court resurfacing and refurbishment. As I write this newsletter, an outstanding $25, 794 has been raised towards those efforts. We are aiming for $40 000, so if you are willing and able to, we encourage you to keep up the great work and see if we can reach our goal over the next week.

The day promises to be a fun-filled experience for our students with sporting competitions, the Colour Run and the opportunity to slime some teachers! We will put out expressions of interest for parent volunteers on the day and look forward to you coming down and enjoying the event with us.

Grandparents Morning

We look forward to welcoming many grandparents and special people to attend our grandparents morning on October 31st. Please fill out the RSVP sent through on NFORMA so we can plan accordingly. On the day we will require grandparents to sign in via clipboards that we will have at the hall entrance. We will once again have our Book Fair on, so we encourage grandparents to head down there with their grandchildren and purchase a christmas or “just because” gift, and help us encourage our students to read by giving the gift of a book.

Please refer to the P&F page for further details.

Be The Light

My Be the Light example from this week comes from what could have been quite a dark time. Last week a student severely broke their arm out on the yard and critical action was needed by our staff to ensure the students’ safety into the future. Our staff responded incredibly well and compassionately in what was an extremely stressful scenario. Despite long waits for an ambulance and a student who was in severe pain, our staff stayed calm, stayed with the student and supported the parents throughout the entire difficult and drawn out ordeal. A special shout out to Marie, Michele, Kylie and all other staff who supported throughout the incident. Your light shone brightly and offered hope and calm for the student and their family in what could have been a very dark and scary time. Your actions and response make me proud to be the principal of our great school.

Stay safe, Stay Healthy, Stay Connected,

Denis Johnstone

Principal

Positive Behaviour Learning (PBL)