Dear Families

A very warm 2023 welcome, to everyone at St Mary’s Primary School. We are so excited to be starting the new year and have so many wonderful opportunities planned for this year. Of course the heartbeat of a school is always the children and it was with great joy and excitement that we saw the return of our beautiful students on Monday. It was great seeing the pride in which they wore their uniforms when walking through the gate. Thank you for ensuring that full uniform is worn, hair tied back and correct school shoes worn. I loved hearing about their holidays, chatting at the gates and seeing their beaming smiles. We wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year for Sunday 22nd January and enjoyed learning about these celebrations from several of our students. We especially welcome those families who are new to our community, the Tsaglos, Lauder and Dudnyk families.

Our Prep students are very settled and already looking very much at home. We congratulate them on their first full day today. We warmly welcome Ellie, Boyd, Mika, Jack, Anika, Arno, Olivia, Paige, Fernando, Cooper, Lheon, Harvey and Jordan to our St Mary’s community. On Tuesday our Year 5 students met their Prep buddies. This is always a highlight for our senior students and they take caring for their buddies very seriously. Together they will share many buddy activities throughout the year and care for their buddies in the playground. Francesca's (Year 2) grandmother Glenice has been hard at work making out St Mary’s Teddy Bears. Please meet my Mary Bear. I look forward to sharing the year with my Mary Bear!

We also welcome our new staff members: Grace Acetta (Year 3), Melissa Mabilia (Year 6), Jessica Earle (Performing Arts & Education in Faith), Anastasia Romios (Year 5-Thursdays), Huda Abiad (LSO) and Justin Buttigieg (LSO).

So many of you have noticed the freshening up of the front of the school and the new carpet and painted walls in the Berchmans building. We are very proud of our learning spaces and the start of our external updates. In the Specialist Campus a new oven has gone into the kitchen and the servery doors have been converted to sliding glass doors. We look forward to many events in this space this year. All of the carpets have been steamed cleaned and the internal and external windows cleaned. We thank Paul, Luke and Dave from Kingsbury Decorating for their painting work and Rick and his team from Ground Floor Concepts for our new carpet. Steve May our Maintenance Officer has done many jobs throughout the school and our cleaners Blazia and Dragan have steamed and cleaned to ensure our learning environment is the best it can be. We thank each of them.

Our new devices for our Year 3 to Year 6 students are currently being prepared to be given to the students and we thank Anthony and Daniela for enabling this. Our staff and Erica in the office have been working hard in late January and we are ready to go!

I encourage you to read the newsletter each fortnight as it is our main form of communication. We include important dates, up coming events and student highlights. Next week we have members from the St Kilda Football Club working with our Year 5 & 6 students, exploring how to lead and how to play to your strengths. Taekwondo has started on Wednesday afternoons, if interested please see the end of this newsletter. Swimming trials, tennis trials and an ICT Information evening 7-8pm on Thursday 16th February, Second Hand Uniform Stall Thursday 9th February 3:20-4:00pm are a few of the events on in the next fortnight.

This week has had a wellbeing welcome theme and today we had our Art Project where each student drew a picture of themselves within a heart. Together with the staff and Father Jerome these hearts will be displayed in the foyer. We look forward to sharing the end result with you soon. Our clubs have started up and if you would like to join Chess, Kelly Sports or Taekwondo please see our community page. It is also great to see our students using our Zen Zone.

One of our favourite parts of the week is working with our Year 6 leaders as we prepare for our weekly assembly. Tomorrow Josie and Chris will be our hosts, we know we are in good hands. We look forward to seeing everyone at Mass this Sunday at 5:30pm. The Year 6 Leaders will receive a blessing and their badges as well as our Semester One SRC students. Please pack a picnic and join families in Alma Park afterwards.

Finally I would like to thank many of you for your cards and thank yous at the end of last year. It was overwhelming to read your appreciation of the energy and direction of our school. This year we will all work hard together to continue to grow our school, ensuring that our students get the best learning experiences and environment that we can provide. I look forward to chatting with you all before and after school, seeing you at Mass this Sunday and at our Welcome Drinks on Friday 17th February.

Take care and wishing God's blessings and peace upon each of you.

Mrs Cathy Ferrari

2023 St Mary’s Primary School Staff

Father Jerome Santamaria	Parish Priest
Thien Nguyen Bernadette Milne	Parish Secretary Parish Associate
Cathy Ferrari	Principal
Anthony Speranza	Deputy Principal
Erica Nastopoulos	Admin & Finance
Janelle Adams	Library Assistance (Thurs) & Office Assistance (Fri)
Leadership Team
Angela Mason	Literacy Leader & Literacy Intervention Co-ordinator
Daniela Borgese	Prep & eLearning & Marketing leader
Catherine Le Hunt	Learning Diversity Leader & Maths Leader & Maths Intervention
Classroom Teachers	Daniela Borgese - Prep B (Rosemary Perri - Thurs) Naomi Raffaele - Year 1R Jacquie Fleming - Year 2J Grace Accetta - Year 3A Aoife McGuinness - Year 4 McG Maureen McDonald- Year 4 McD (Rosemary Perri - Fri) Angela Mason - Year 5M (Anastasia Romios - Thurs) Melissa Mabilia - Year 6M
Specialist Team
Rosemary Perri Jessica Earle	Art (Mon & Tues) Performing Arts & Education in Faith (Mon to Wed)
Carmel Vozzo	Italian (Mon & Tues)
Simon Addicoat	Physical Education Years 4-6 (Wed)
Chris Kidman	Physical Education Years Prep - Yr 3 (Wed)
LSO Team
Melody Carpio	Supporting Prep
Huda Abiad	Supporting Yr 1& Year 3
Sarah D’Mello	Supporting Yr 4
Melissa Eyers	Supporting Yr 4
Kat Reade	Supporting Yr 2
Justin Buttigieg	Supporting Yr 5 & 6

Community