Principal's Post

Dear Families,

 Welcome to the last week of term.

This morning, we kicked off the last week of term on a celebratory note, with our student/staff admin prayer service and opening of our Foster Administration Building, named after our long serving teacher and Deputy Principal Carmel Foster who served our St James community for over 30 years. It was wonderful to see so many families in attendance.

On the afternoon of Wednesday 2 April, we will hold the Official opening of our Foster Administration Building. This will commence at 2:30pm, preceded by light refreshments and a building tour at 2pm. We hope to see many of you there.

We have been holding school tours in preparation for our 2026 Prep enrolments and have had a great turn out at our two tours so far.  We have another tour tomorrow and our final official tour on Wednesday 7 May. All tours commence at 9:15am - 10am. Ideally, we should have enrolment forms filled out online by now for ALL current families who have a child commencing Prep next year. Please make the time to do this over the next few days if you have not yet completed the online enrolment form available via our website. 

Please feel free to share our open days with anyone interested in learning more about our wonderful school community.

Tuesday 1st April - 9:15am - 10am

Wednesday 7th May - 9:15am - 10am

Click here to share a link to register for one of these dates.

Maria Ruberto - The importance of sleep

I recently listened to a podcast featuring Maria Ruberto who is a frequent visitor to our St James community. Many of you attended her Parent Info evening last year.  I recommend this episode for you to consider listening to. Please click here.

Piano looking for a new home

Eastmont Preschool have contacted us regarding a second hand piano which may be useful for a family. Please contact Emir at the office if you are interested.

Marathon Club

There will be no marathon club this week. We are looking forward to seeing all our runners back in Week 2 of Term 2. Belinda and Katrina have done a fantastic job in coordinating the breakfast each Wednesday morning, however they need some help with setting up the tables and seats, and serving breakfast to the students. Please volunteer via this link .

CSEF

Any families that hold the following concession cards:

• Centrelink Pensioner Concession
• Health Care Card
• Foster Parent
• Veterans Affairs Pensioner (Gold Card)

 are welcome to apply for the Camp, Sports and Excursion Fund. If you have not done so already, please come into the office or email a copy of your concession card to office@sjvermont.catholic.edu.au so that we can apply on your behalf.

Special Food Day - Sushi

It's a Sushi Food Day... with ice-cream is on this Wednesday the 2 April. 

Respect Day

On Friday, March 28th, we held our Respect Day , please see our Wellbeing page for a summary and photos of the day.

Learning Conferences

There are very few time slots remaining so if you have not yet booked please do so by this evening. These conferences are a compulsory aspect to our partnership we share in educating your child.

Please keep to your 10 minute time slot and speak to your child's class teacher at the conference if you believe you need another meeting.

The three way conferences only work effectively when all three parties are present; child, parent/s, teacher. 

School Concert Production

Auditions have commenced for the 2025 St James School Concert which will take place at Crossway Baptist Church on Monday 11th & Tuesday 12th August. Our Year Five and Six students have the opportunity to audition for one of the main character roles in addition to their class act.

Volunteers Needed

Volunteer to help with the Farm

We have now filled all dates for School Holiday farm duty, so a big thank you to all the families for their constant support.

We are now looking for families for Term 2 weekend farm duty. It has been wonderful having so many new families this term. 

The dates are below, so if you are free to help out, email me with your preferred dates on joanne.magnik@sjvermont.catholic.edu.au

Volunteer to water our lawns

We need volunteers to water the lawns. This includes 20 minutes of hand watering and putting sprinklers on the timer - It's approximately a 30 min commitment each day.

Dates required:

Saturday 5th April

Sunday 6th April

Monday 7th April

Tuesday 8th April

Wednesday 9th April

Thursday 10th April

Friday 11th April 

Please email the office and let us know what days you can do. We would greatly appreciate it.

MACSEYE Out of Hours School Care

Please register your children for this service. It is operating on Friday for families who require this service.

Click here to register

If you have any questions you can email MACSEYE

directly at enrolments@macseye.vic.edu.au

We thank Sarah for the work she has done in the program throughout the first term. Sarah will be moving to another program next term and while Jake will remain as one of the assistants, we will have a new coordinator commencing next term. MACSEYE will introduce this coordinator to families ASAP.

Other News Items

• There are no official classes for students on Friday 5 April due to Learning conferences and Time in Lieu for staff.
• Please see the RE page for parish Holy Week and Easter celebrations at St John's church
• School starts back on Tuesday 22 April, after the Easter Monday public holiday. We will commence the day with a brief assembly including an Easter prayer service.
• Friday 25th April is a public holiday for AN Day. We will hold a commemoration service on Thursday 24th April at 10:55am. 

Hope you all have a great week ahead and a wonderful holiday period.

Kind regards,

Dave