St Francis de Sales Catholic Primary School Lynbrook Newsletter

From the Principal

Our Working Bee This Saturday

 

The First Working Bee for 2025 will be held on Saturday 24th May 2025

We will be holding our first Working Bee for 2025 from 9am to 12 noon.  A variety of gardening and odd jobs around the school will be undertaken to improve our school grounds.

 

Parents who attend 2 working bees per year, sign in and participate for the full 3 hours will receive a $250 credit towards the Maintenance Levy on their school fees.  

 

We ask all parents to bring gloves, hat, raincoat, sunscreen and a drink bottle.  If you have any garden tools such as listed below, please bring these to the working bee:

  • wheelbarrow
  • rake 
  • shovel
  • digging tools to remove weeds
  • pruning sheers 
  • a small hand saw

Please indicate your attendance via the notification on Operoo that will go out.

 

All are welcome to attend. We have a few jobs to do to tidy up our grounds.

School Photo Day - Tuesday, 27th May

Please check your child's school bag for your individual order flyer with unique code that went home recently.

 

All students are required to wear their full Winter uniform, including their red school jumpers. Please ensure your child arrives at school on time and is dressed neatly for their class and individual photos.

 

To avoid any disruptions, we kindly ask that you do not schedule any appointments for your child on this day.

 

Thank you for your cooperation and support in helping us capture these special school memories.

 

We have the following staff who will be joining our team for Semester 2 or have been given additional roles.

  1. As a result of the Government providing a small grant for tutoring for the remainder of the 2025 school year, we are delighted to appoint Rhonda D'Mello for an additional one day/week as a tutor. As funding is very limited, we have decided to focus this tutoring to junior students in Year 2. Rhonda will be supporting students that require extra support in Mathematics.  These groups will be organised by Joanna our Learning & Teaching Leader. Parents will be informed if their child will receive this extra support. 
  2. When Kristy goes on maternity leave, Sarah Fritchley will be working an additional 2 days on Monday and Friday -  full time in LS2 - Juniors.
  3. Andrea Soyer has been appointed as our Music teacher for Semester two 2025 when Kristy Kawa commences maternity leave. Andrea has been a music teacher at St Francis de Sales and will commence next term for the remainder of this year. 
  4. Melissa Junkeer has been appointed to the Visual Arts Position and will replace Katherine Slater for the remainder of the 2025 school year. Katherine will be taking leave during semester two.
  5. Gabriela Perotti will commence as our school counselor in June. She will work once/fortnight. Gabriela has worked at St Francis de Sales before and replaces Ashna who has had to unexpectedly return to India. 
  6. Aoife Tierney will also commence maternity leave in August. Her replacement is currently being finalised and will be announced at the start of Term 3.

I am sure you will make these teachers feel very welcome at St Francis de Sales and will support them as they transition into their roles.

Annual Report to the School Community

Our 2024 Annual Report to the School Community has been completed and verified by Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic School (MACS). It will be published on our website next week and in next week's weekly newsletter.

 

Review Update

Our evidence for our 2025 School Review has been gathered and collated according to the areas for review. We are in the process of preparing to share this evidence. Evidence for our Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA) will be shared with Paul appointed by VRQA.  There are three parts to this review.

Part 1 - Desktop review by Paul of evidence. 

Part 2 - Onsite visit in July

Part 3 - A Review Report

In addition, a review of our School Improvement Framework (SIF) with evidence of our improvement over the past four years will be conducted by an independent reviewer. Stephen will be doing this review.  He is the National Curriculum Services (NCS) allocated reviewer for St Francis de Sales school review. There are also stages to this review.

Stage 1 - Sharing of evidence with Stephen

Stage 2 - Pre-Visit in August (Half day)

Stage 3 - SIF Review ( 2 days) in August

Stage 4 - Dialogue and Engagement Day in October. This is when priorities for our next School Improvement directions are determined and will then form the Annual Action Plans for the next four years of learning and improvement.

 

This is a great time for us to have a review and set our priorities. These priorities will be informed by the MACS 2030 strategic plans for Catholic schools.

MACS 2030: Forming Lives to Enrich the World is a strategic plan that will help all Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) staff come together to make the most of what a Catholic education has to offer, so we can have the greatest and most distinctive impact in our classrooms, staffrooms and school communities.

 

On the 24 February 2024 MACS launched its Flourishing Learners position statement, Vision for Instruction, which embeds a refreshed and system-wide approach to achieving teaching and learning excellence. In June 2025, MACS will be launching Vision for Engagement. Our direction for our 2026-2029 School Improvement Plans will be informed by the evidence based practices that support the MACS 2030 strategic plans. 

 

Our dialogue and engagement in this process will be vital to informing our plans. Embracing continuous improvement ensures we keep growing and developing as a 'high performing school' that we have continued to be over the past 15 years. As a prospective parents for Prep 2026 recently stated, 'We are not a cookie cutter school." We definitely want to have the greatest and most distinctive impact in our learning spaces, staffroom and school community.

Please Note

School closure

Friday 25th July will be a school closure date as we have a staff professional Learning day.

Unfortunately we were unable to get our speaker for Monday 23rd July so it connected to the school holidays.

 

Playground Renovations

On Monday 26 May work will commence to re-surface the Rainbow playground. The rainbow playground will not be available for use during this work. The gate close to the rainbow playground will also stay locked during the construction works. Please use the gate beside the blue playground next week. We look forward toplaying on the rainbow playground as soon as it is ready.

Presentation of Flags

Cassandra Fernando our newly elected Federal Member presented our Junior SRC members with a new Australian flag and a new Aboriginal flag. We were delighted to receive the flags and also to hear Cassandra say we can all achieve our dreams. She grew up in Dandenong and went to school at St Gerard's North Dandenong. She said if she achieved her dreams, we can too! If we want to be Prime Minister one day we sure can!!

CONGRATULATIONS

There was a buzz in the air this morning. Nearly three quarters of our school students walked to school!! It was a special sight to see. On arrival at school they were treated to a lovely breakfast cooked by our P&F and served by our staff. It was a huge success. Congratulations and a BIG thanks to all who took part and contributed to making this first ever walk to School & breakfast such a wonderful and memorable school event.

 

 

Christine White

Principal