Principal's News

Term 3, Week 5

Westernport Senior Sports Day

Our Year 3–6 students recently joined students from St Brendan’s and St Joseph’s for the Westernport Senior Sports Day.

It was a fantastic opportunity for students from across our three Westernport Parish schools to come together, participate in a range of sporting activities and enjoy some friendly competition.

While there were plenty of great sporting moments throughout the day, the focus was on teamwork, having a go and having fun. We were proud to see our students encouraging one another, showing great sportsmanship and giving each activity their best effort.

A big thank you to everyone who helped organise and support the day, and congratulations to all of our students for the wonderful way they represented St Mary’s!

👶🏻 Some Exciting News! 🍼

We are very excited to share some wonderful news with our St Mary’s community — two of our teachers, Kayla Burden and Khris May, are expecting babies!

Kayla is expecting her first baby, while Khris is preparing to welcome baby number three. In an extra special coincidence, they are both due around the end of January 2027!

All going well, both Kayla and Khris will continue working with us for the remainder of the school year.

We know our whole St Mary’s community will join us in congratulating Kayla, Khris and their families on this very exciting news. We wish them both a happy and healthy few months ahead!

Supporting Our Staff and Planning for 2027

You may have seen or heard some of the recent media coverage and speculation about possible changes across Catholic schools in 2027. At this stage, all Catholic schools are working through their planning and budgeting processes while awaiting greater clarity around the new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) for school staff. No decisions have been made at this stage, and my priority throughout this process is to minimise any impact on our students, families and wider school community.

At St Mary’s, we are carefully considering what these changes may mean for our school, while ensuring we continue to provide the best possible learning opportunities for our students and support for our staff.

We are also very conscious of the financial pressures facing many families and are committed to careful and responsible planning so that increased costs are not simply passed on to families through significant fee increases.

As more information becomes available and our planning for 2027 progresses, we will keep our community informed. Our priority remains providing a high-quality Catholic education within a strong, supportive and sustainable school community.

A Very Special Full-Circle Moment

I am excited to share a lovely good-news story that was published in the Herald Sun on Saturday.

I recently had the opportunity to reconnect with a student I taught all the way back in 2007! She was in Grade 1 when I taught her at St Joseph’s Primary School in Springvale, and almost 20 years later, she is now a teacher herself.

It was incredibly special to reconnect after so many years, hear about where life has taken her and learn more about why she chose to become a teacher too. As educators, we don’t always get to see where our students’ journeys take them once they leave our classrooms, so having the opportunity to reconnect so many years later was something I really treasured.

Teaching is such a rewarding profession, and moments like this are a wonderful reminder of the lasting connections we make with the young people we are privileged to teach. To see a former Grade 1 student now inspiring and supporting her own students was a very special full-circle moment!

I can only hope that some of the students we teach each day at St Mary’s will come back to visit us in the years ahead and share where their own journeys have taken them. What a privilege it will be to hear about the people they have become, the paths they have chosen and the difference they are making in the world.