A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Therese Stewart

Welcome to Term 2.

I hope all families had the opportunity to enjoy Easter together and the school holiday. It is lovely to see the children back at school refreshed and ready to go for a term of focused learning and being together.

Miss Georgiou (1-2G) is on leave this week and will return on Monday. Mrs Lema (1-2L) is now on Long Service Leave for five weeks as she travels overseas. We wish her a very safe and exciting holiday. While away Mrs Denise Howey and Mrs Liz Sibley will be the children's classroom teacher.

May the term ahead be one full of great learning and community. Please keep your eyes open for the Skoolbag notification coming home in the next week which gives parents an overview of what is happening in your child's classroom this term.

Farewell Fr Stephen.

As families will be aware Fr Stephen is returning to his homeland to continue his work as a priest. Tomorrow is his last official day at St Agnes'. We thank him for all he has contributed to our Parish and School and wish him all the best as he returns to India to be closer to his family. Father was presented with a gift of a beautiful Tina Leanard painting of the ocean from both the school and parish at Mass on Sunday. We hope it will remind him of Australia and hold special memories of

St Agnes' for him.

Fr John O'Reilly will be our interim Parish Priest until a new PP is appointed to begin in July. This will not impact on the process for the appointment of the new Principal. Fr John is a very experienced PP and although now retired has been very active in Catholic Education.

Full Winter Uniform - Week 3

As we head into the cooler months the children have the first two weeks to transition into wearing their winter uniforms. All students are required to be in full winter uniform by the commencement of Week 3.

Parking.

As some parents may have unfortunately discovered, the local council has been active around the school area enforcing parking restrictions. Please observe the signage around the school to avoid a very costly fine. These signs are in place for the safety of the children both before and after school. St Agnes is lucky to have a number of entry and exit points and ample parking in the area, unlike many schools who suffer dreadful congestion during the busy drop off and pick up times. I will approach the Council to investigate having the drop off zone in front of the school further extended to allow more cars in the drop off zone.

Monday's Pupil Free Day

The dates for the pupil free days were set at the end of last year. I apologise to parents for the disruptive start to the term with a short first week and then our pupil free day yesterday. I know it can be challenging for working parents and I thank you. It was a very successful day yesterday with staff working with members of the Catholic Education Team. It was a day dedicated to preparation for Review and working with the new School Improvement Framework (SIF) Rubric in our ongoing focus on improvement throughout the school community. The rubric has been specifically developed to assist schools in their preparation for the SIF model of school review. The SIF Rubric supports schools through the self-reflection stage of review and assists in framing the data sets and evidence that are submitted to the reviewer. We will continue to work in this area over the term and into next term. Our Reviewer is Jan Hayes, an experienced educator and regular reviewer in schools. She is scheduled to visit the school in week 2 of term 4, on the 15th and 18th of October. During that time she will visit with staff, students and parents as it is a collaborative process with all stakeholders included.

New School Website

Our new school website is nearly ready to launch. It showcases all the great things that happen at St Agnes and is contemporary and informative. We will send a link to all families when it is ready to go and show the children at our next assembly. We will also be using Twitter as a way of staying connected to school. Matt Cherry will include the details in the ICT section of this newsletter so families have the opportunity to follow the schools twitter feed. A sneek peek below!

Mother's Day/Special Friend's Stall & Breakfast.

The Mother's Day/Special Friend's Stall is TOMORROW! Hopefully the dad's will make sure there is a few dollars in children's wallets for a special gift for mum! A big thank you to our P&F for their organisation of the stall. It is beautiful to watch the children making their very careful selections for their mums or special friends.

Mother's Day/Special Friend's breakfast is on Friday 10th May. Well done and thank you to the Dads for their organisation of this great event. I am very impressed with their dedication to the mum's/grandmothers and special friends in the children's lives and for contributing to the great community spirit at St Agnes. Details are in the P&F section of today's newsletter.

New inewsletter

We hope you enjoy our new newsletter format! It will be available on the website as soon as it is live and a link will be sent each fortnight to families via Skoolbag. We look forward to hearing what you think . Enjoy!

I'm looking forward to another terrific term at St Agnes!

Until next fortnight

Therese

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