Principal's News

Dear Families,

What a fabulous day it was last Friday for our Mother's Day Liturgy, Afternoon Tea and Pampering.  Thank you all so much for coming and celebrating the festival of our mums and grandmothers and the special people in the children's lives.  It was a real community effort. To our mum coordinators and helpers, Hayley, Hannah, Belinda and Leanne, THANK YOU SO MUCH! To Euroa Secondary College students for their wonderful catering, serving and tidy up on the day, you were invaluable, and to Euroa Pharmacy for the great gifts this year.  We kept it all local and it was fantastic.

Our Foundation enrolments for 2025 are very strong for this time of the year.  Thank you to families who have returned enrolment forms, I encourage you to do so if you haven't already. If you know of any families looking to enrol for Foundation next year, please let them know about St John's.

I received an email from Melissa Horne, Minister for Roads and Road Safety,  last week in relation to our community effort to 'Save our Crossing Supervisor'.  This was great news as we now know we will have Marc till at least June 2025.  Her letter is below.

As mentioned in my email to families last Friday I was very disappointed to learn of the discriminatory and unjust decision that the State Government has made, excluding most students at Catholic and Independent schools from the $400 School Savings Bonus.  I have written to Annabelle Cleeland, State MP for Euroa and the Premier Jacinta Allan to voice my concerns and  I encourage you to contact your local State MP to make your voice heard about this matter as well.  I have been told by several parents that the link was not working in the letter sent home on Friday.  I have attached a copy of the template letter here for you to download and modify if you wish.  The email addresses are:- Annabelle.cleeland@parliament.vic.gov.au  the Premier’s email address is jacinta.allan@parliament.vic.gov.au 

We have Assembly this Friday, with our Foundation students presenting their learning.  Assembly starts at 2:45pm and everyone is always welcome.

I encourage parents to go to our Mental Health and Wellbeing page to read the information about 'Frustration Tolerance'.  We are seeing this more and more in children.  This quick to read but informative article explains what it is and how you can assist your child/children manage frustration with some very simple strategies.  

As part of our School Improvement Plan and Annual Action Plan we have started our journey in adopting a new Reading Model at St John's.  On our pupil free day several weeks ago the whole staff travelled to Sacred Heart in Yarrawonga to see the model in action.  This is a framework that teaches the skills and strategies that allows students time and space to engage in authentic reading experiences while also developing a love of reading.  We have our second day with consultant Matt Knight on Friday 7th June which is also a pupil free day.  

We have been very fortunate and are very grateful to receive a grant of $5000 from 'Friends of the Library'.  The grant will be used for Decodable Readers to continue to increase our collection to support children with their reading.  We thank them very much!

Until next fortnight

Therese