PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Term 2 - Week 5

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I trust that all had a wonderful weekend celebrating the special women in your families. In the lead-up to Mother’s Day, there were a number of events in our school that make it a wonderful time of celebration. The Mother’s Day Stall provides an opportunity for the children to purchase little gifts for their mums and grandmothers, which I know is a highlight for many on the Sunday morning. The Mother’s Day Dinner held on Friday 3rd May was a night just for the mums to come together, have a nice meal, while enjoying some fun and frivolity. Finally, the breakfast and liturgy; whole school community events bringing family together to focus on the wonderful women connected to St Agnes’. I would like to thank all of our parents who had input into the Mother’s Day Stall, Dinner, Breakfast and Liturgy. There are too many to mention, but you all know who you are. It’s times like these we feel lucky to be part of a caring community.

Assessment and Reporting

Our staff and students are well and truly in the swing of assessment for Semester One reporting. The transformation in the education assessment landscape over the last 15 years has been incredible. We’ve gone from individually teacher-designed, handwritten assessments to online, adaptive testing platforms that have questions directly addressing curriculum outcomes; getting harder or easier depending on questions answered correctly or incorrectly. There are many benefits to this, most notably the time saving efficiencies for teachers. Teacher assessment and analysis platforms allow us the chance to look at individual, cohort and whole schol growth in curriculum areas such as Reading. This week the children will complete a range of one-to-one and online adaptive assessments. The outcomes of these assessments, as well as others completed throughout the semester, inform teacher decisions for Semester One Reports. Assessment and reporting time is often a stressful time for our staff, as there is a significant increase in workload, in addition to their ‘day job’. As a school, we make adjustments during this time. We provide a full day of ‘report writing release’ for classroom teachers to work from home to write reports and we also cancel a number of after-school meetings to make it more manageable for our staff. Our Specialist Teachers play a key role in this process as they help to provide this time for classroom teachers. More information will be provided around the specifics of Semester One Reports an upcoming newsletter.

Walk to School Safely Day

Thank you to our Student Wellbeing Leader Mrs Georgiou for organising Walk Safely to School Day last week. There were great numbers of students and parents at both locations, making for a wonderful morning walk. We continue to talk to the children about ‘Stop, Listen, Look, Think’, as they move about the neighbourhood on foot, scooters or bikes. Thank you to all parents for being part of it, making it safe and enjoyable. Thank you also to Amy and Anthony DePropertis for organsing the fruit.

School Review

Catholic Schools are reviewed every four years as part of an improvement cycle and 2024 is our turn. An external reviewer (educational expert/consultant) is appointed by Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools to complete this review. There are two aspects to it: Compliance and School Improvement. Our Leadership Team is currently taking the staff through a self-reflection process to assess where we sit against the School Improvement Rubric and Indicators. We assess ourselves, then provide this assessment with supporting evidence to the reviewer. There are five areas in the Rubric: 

• Religious Dimension
• Learning and Teaching
• Student Wellbeing
• Leadership and Management
• School Community

The reviewer will then come into the school to talk with students, parents and staff around the current climate and improvement agenda. This will all happen in Term Three. As we move through this process, it has been highly affirming of much of the work that has been done in our school since we were last reviewed in 2020. It’s incredible to think how far we have come. We look forward to working with the reviewer to learn more about ourselves and where we can improve.

Gratitude to our Staff

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our wonderful staff for their commitment to the children/school families over the past couple of weeks. There has been considerable illness in the school, which has impacted our staff and resulted in absences, meaning we have been short-staffed. The teachers and Learning Support Officers have been working in overdrive to maintain the integrity of learning programs and I am very grateful to them for their work. We are starting to get some reprieve from this which is certainly welcome. At St Agnes’ we want the type of individual who is driven by the moral imperative to promote the engagement, learning, and well-being of each of their students. We are lucky to have this in spades.

Student Illness

As was communicated last week, there has been considerable illness in the school recently, as the weather has cooled off. If your child is sick, please do not send them to school until they are well. A sick child cannot be an effective learner in the classroom and it is not fair to other children and our staff to have sick children at school. Thank you in advance for supporting the community in this way.

Prep Prayer in PJs

A friendly reminder for our Prep families about tonight’s Prep Prayer in PJs Family Faith Night. The children are asked to come to school in their PJs to learn together with mums/dads about prayer. This will be held in the Prep classroom and commences at 7pm, so there is time for children to have dinner, pop their pyjamas on and come to school. It will be all finished by 7.50pm, allowing everyone to get home and settle into bed by 8pm. It is expected that all children and families are in attendance. Engaging in learning about the Catholic faith is part of enrolling your child in a Catholic school.

Cybersafety - Inform and Empower - Wednesday 5th June at 6.30pm

I would kindly ask all Year 3-6 parents to mark this important date in your calendar. We have re-engaged Marty and Carly from Inform and Empower to deliver an onsite parent information session on digital safety for all Year 3-6 parents. We will also be asking all Year 3-6 students to be onsite for this evening as well, because the school will run student sessions parallel to the parent seminar. The digital world our children live in has many benefits, but also lots of challenges too. Marty and Carly are well-regarded experts in this space and have plenty of wonderful tips to share.

Parking in Staff/Parish car park

This is a friendly reminder for all parents (and grandparents/helpers) that the Staff/Parish Car park is not for use before and after school. There is a significant amount of foot traffic through this space before and after school, so for the safety of all children, parents are asked to park elsewhere at the start and end of day. Parents are also reminded not to stop in the middle of the road to pick up children, holding up traffic behind.

Before School Care

As many of you may be aware, this year Extend have offered Before School Care four days per week and After School Care every day. Due to very low attendance at Before School Care, the BSC service will be reduced from four days down to three, as at the beginning of June. The new days will be Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Before School Care is an essential service for some and Extend has some wonderful staff running the programs at the moment. I encourage all families to utilise this service as much as possible to ensure we can continue to make it available for all families. I can confirm with all families that After School Care will not be impacted.

Dad’s Night Out

On Saturday 25th May, all St Agnes’ dads are invited to the Sandringham Hotel (118 Beach Road) for a catch-up. It will be casual, with some dinner and footy. For further information, you can contact Bart Carroll on 0421 877 991. It’s great to see our dads getting together on a regular basis.

St Agnes’ Biggest Morning Tea - From Mrs Georgiou

We look forward to welcoming all St Agnes’ families to our Biggest Morning Tea on Thursday 23rd May at 10.30am in the hall. During the morning we will have special performances from some of our musical students and we will announce the winners of our raffle. This year we have been very fortunate to receive donations from many businesses in and around the community. This is a raffle you want to be in! All money raised from raffle tickets will go straight to the Cancer Council. You will be able to make a gold coin donation on the day, buy raffle tickets over the next two weeks or go directly to our school fundraising page to donate or click on the button here.

We look forward to welcoming you for a cup of tea next Thursday 23rd May. Without going overboard, we encourage the children to wear a touch of yellow with their school uniform on that day. Yellow socks, hair ties or something similar would be good.

St Kilda Football Club Visit

I’m sure many of you will have heard, on Monday our Year 3-6 students were treated to a visit from six footballers from the St Kilda Football Club mens team. With current players such as Liam Henry and Callum Wilkie, it was a special morning. The children fired questions at the players for 30 minutes, covering topics such as favourite teams, worst injury, nutrition and wellbeing. 

Open Day

We have our final Open Day on Tuesday 21st May and prospective families are welcome to come along any time between 9am and 3pm on this day. No appointments are necessary. Thank you to all who are advocating for our school in the local community, especially amongst the kinders. Round one offers have been sent to families and we are looking to do a second round of offers in mid-June as we look to open up a second Prep class, pending continued applications. Our next Playgroup session for kindergarten-aged children is on Friday 24th May from 9am-10am. 

Term Two School Fees

Term Two School Fees are now payable. Updated fee statements will be sent out in the next week. Please ensure prompt payment and contact Shannon Shine (sshine@sahighett.catholic.edu.au) if you would like to set up a direct debit or payment plan.

Assembly

Assemblies are in the Hall on Wednesday afternoons at 2.40pm. Parents are welcome to attend. At assembly, there will be presentations from classes, student awards, birthday acknowledgements and special announcements from student leaders.

Wed 15th May - Year 6

Wed 22nd May - Prep

Wed 29th May - Year 5

Wed 5th June - Year 1

Wed 12th June - Year 4

Wed 19th June - Year 2

Wednesday 26th June - No class item

Enjoy the rest of your week. Hopefully more of this sunshine to come.

Kind regards,

Lachie.