Principal's News 

“Jesus, open my ears and heart to your word today.”

IMPORTANT NOTICE

An afternoon with the Allied Health Team

I strongly encourage parents to attend a significant meeting tomorrow that will give you an overview of the extended educational dimension that we provide at St James. 

Please refer to the flier attached and seek to become more informed about the support being made available to our school community by our Occupational Therapist, Speech Pathologist and Family Counsellor. 

Friday 22nd July.  

Book through the Try booking link   https://www.trybooking.com/CAOTJ

St James 2023 Principal appointment

The process for appointing a Principal for St James for 2023 and onwards will commence next week (27th July) with the Regional Director Deb Egan and Educational Consultant Simon Fitzpatrick meeting with the School Advisory Council to explain the process when appointing a Principal to a parish based Catholic Primary School.  

Fr David Cartwright  returned to Brighton from overseas on Tuesday and has had initial contact with Simon.  The process to appoint a Principal is a thorough procedure and the appointment will be made before the end of the school year.  

The recent school review will be invaluable in understanding where the school is currently placed and the next stage of growth and development.   The opportunity to dialogue with the SAC, Leadership and staff teams and panel members will enable a criteria to be formed prior to the advertising of the position.  Once applications are received they will be assessed regarding suitability before the interviews are conducted with a panel of school representatives, MACs educational leaders and the parish priest or his clergy representative and a current school Principal. 

Generous donation

We recently received a call from an ex family Marisa and Philip Mance, who enquired whether we had  a defibrillator in the school.  Before this  time, in the event that we required one we would have accessed one from our neighbors at Star of the Sea.

Prior to receiving this call in the term break the Parents Association had already ordered one for our school for which we are very grateful.  

Nevertheless Marisa and Philip still donated the value of the defibrillator on order!  We expect the unit to be installed very soon.

Marisa does teach at Star of the Sea at different times and called in this week.  She has many fond memories and caught up with Imelda and reflected on the time that her three girls were here.  I have included the correspondence that we received this week.

Hi Imelda,

It was so lovely to see you again yesterday after so many years!

I checked our photos last night - Katia attended St James from 1998 - 2002, Camille from 2001 - 2005 and Celia from 2006 - 2010. We all have very happy and special memories of our time at St James, in particular the very caring and nurturing environment that the school provided for our daughters.

I just wanted to confirm that I have just emailed you a receipt for the transfer of $2,400 to cover the cost of the defibrillator. Phillip and I are so pleased that we have been able to assist in this way.

Very kind regards,

Marisa Mance and Philip

Ange Franich

Ange will be away for three weeks commencing from Monday 1st August.  In the time that she is away Iris and Ann will be helping out in the office.  

In regards to the newsletter, Iris will start compiling the newsletter on a Tuesday and therefore could you please have items for her on Tuesday.  

The newsletter will be sent to families on Friday for the two newsletter weeks that Ange is away.

School Review 

Last week we completed the final stage School Improvement Framework School Review with Kylie Graham our external reviewer , Donna Anderson, MACs School Effectiveness Leader and Simon Fitzpatrick MACS Southern Zone Educational Consultant.

There was a  tremendous amount of work that was invested by the staff and representatives from the School Advisory Councils and the Parent Association in collecting data regarding our school's current phase of school improvement.

 The work invested in the past months included:

1) documentation submission for regulatory compliance and VRQA registration

2) engagement in many thorough workshops in our self appraisal of school life at staff and in Professional Learning Team meetings

3) submitting evidence that validates where we believe we are in the 5 spheres of school improvement. 

• Religious Dimension
• Leadership and Management
• Student Wellbeing
• School Community
• Learning and Teaching

4) moderation, discussion and in depth dialogue that gave further clarity to our School Improvement Framework rubrics

5) engagement  in meeting as Collaborative Communities, (unit Levels)  individually as a Leadership team etc

Many hours were invested by Carmelina, Georgia, Olivia, Emma, Belinda to lead and organize the SIF area and by Imelda and Ange for the administration needs especially with the Compliance side of the school review.

The work of all our teachers and specialists to reflect and prove what we have achieved is to be commended  and we will continue to achieve and meet our school educational  plans. 

We have received the draft report which was sent to the Quality Assessors for final approval from our meeting last Thursday 21st July. Kylie was impressed with the honest and authentic manner of the whole school review process.  She was very impressed by the professionalism and the commitment of the staff. 

I am very proud of our staff and progress that our school has made in the past four years of our strategic plan. 

Upcoming school closures 

St James will have two Professional Learning days later in the term.  An extra day has been permitted by MACs Melbourne Archdiocesan Catholic schools leaders this term,  to acknowledge the need for our  teachers to plan and engage in professional growth.  

Every term we set aside a day in Week 8 or 9 for the planning for the next term.  The day that was set aside was Friday 9th September in Term 3 .  We have elected to use the extra day on Monday 12th September to continue our focus of Catholic Identity and Religious Education planning.  Please mark these days in your calendar and I will inform OSHClub of the closure for those families who may need to make bookings.  This will also be dependent on the number of bookings. 

 OSHClub

Dear parents,  

Please find attached program news and update of fees sent from OHSC Jess Sergeant, Regional Services Manager .

Unfortunately for St James, we will be losing our current OSHClub Co-ordinator, but it is a great opportunity for Laura, as she has been well recognised for her hard work and has received a significant promotion within the OSHClub.   We wish her well and please make a point of saying goodbye to Laura on her final day, next Thursday 29th of July.

Congratulations to the Bartley family who have shared the following message.

We were very lucky to welcome Meredith Patricia Bartley to our family as the fourth and final member of the girl gang (alongside Vivienne, Gwendolen and Genevieve) on Sunday 19th June at Epworth Freemasons, weighing 3.7kg. We are just loving getting to know her and are all enjoying the extra special newborn cuddles. 

Thanks for the many well wishes from St James!!

Danielle and Tim

SURPRISE NEWS RECEIVED TODAY!

Baby Sophie McCarthy Featherstone 

Born 20th July at 2.59pm

Weight 3kgs 

Congratulations to Lisa and Gary and best wishes on the early arrival of baby Sophie.

COVID Safety news

This week you would have received further safety information.  Can I thank families for your support to ensure that we are as free of COVID as we can be.   I have included another update to assist you in our collective position.

Reduction of testing and isolation exemption period

The period of time when someone is considered a recently confirmed case and therefore exempt from testing and isolation requirements has been reduced from the previous 12 weeks to four weeks.

This means that staff and students who are household contacts of people with COVID-19 are not exempt from the testing and isolation requirements after four weeks of completing isolation with COVID-19. Previously, this period was 12 weeks.

This means that a student or staff member who is a household contact and wishes to attend school must take five RATs over seven days and receive negative test results, and wear a face mask (if over eight years old) in indoor spaces. This applies from four weeks after the end of an isolation period when they were a case.

Families and staff will also have to report being a household contact to their school after this four-week period.

To date we have navigated the disruption that the recent COVID and flu spread.  I ask you to appreciate that we may at times need to be flexible in how we cover sudden staff absences due to illness.  The bank of emergency replacement in all schools is very thin and in some places non existent.  There may be times where children's classes will be combined etc .  To this point we have been very fortunate.  I ask for your patience and understanding if we have unwanted disruption.

Faith in our future

Brendan