Message from Aoife

A warm welcome back onsite to everyone! We were delighted to see happy and excited children rushing into school yesterday morning and we're looking forward to the rest of the term ahead. There's lots happening at St John's at the moment so I've included some details below to keep everyone informed:

New Principal Appointment process

The process to appoint a new principal began yesterday with Wayne Richard, Principal Consultant from the Western Region of Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS), meeting with staff. From there, a role description will be formulated and advertised online. A panel will be convened made up of parent representatives, Parish representatives and a team member from MACS. We anticipate that someone will be appointed to begin in Jan 2022, ready for the new school year.

Farm update

As mentioned in earlier correspondence, Fr Rene and our Parish has supported the school to continue the use of the space for the next 12 months. We are very grateful for this and look forward to further conversations focusing on beyond 12 months. MACS will continue these conversations with Catholic Archdiocese Melbourne. 

For now, we have had to consider Child Safety with the new arrangements, therefore a fence will soon be erected between the convent and the farm. This will assist us to meet Child Safety requirements and was an opportunity for us to update our Farm policy to reflect the changing environment. The policy will be shared when it is ratified. A surveyor was engaged and completed the surveying last week to plan out the fence line and this plan has been submitted to the Archdiocese for approval. At this stage we are awaiting the approval of placement and we have builders ready to begin. We have erected a new shed for school use also. New tenants will move into the Convent tomorrow (Friday 30th July), therefore the fence will be the top priority, so we can have children over in our beautiful farm space, until then we will have experiences in our outdoor areas at school. 

Until the fence is installed we ask children to drop their bikes off at the farm gate in the morning, a staff member will store the bikes and hand them back out in the afternoon. The code to the padlock will also be changed, the new code will be shared with all families via email as soon as the fence is installed so that you can once again access our beautiful space.  

Our Preps are celebrating 100 days of school - Monday 2nd August

The countdown is on and the big day is drawing near, our Preps are super excited to be hitting their 100 days milestone. Our Prep educators have planned a day full of fun and celebration, starting with an early breakfast at school on Monday 2nd August. A letter was sent home to Prep families yesterday, COVID restrictions easing have certainly smiled on us for this particular celebration!

St John's Mini Olympics - Friday 30th July

Lots of our families have been getting into the Olympic Spirit and cheering on our athletes as they compete so we thought why not bring a little bit of the Olympics right here to St John's! As per our note home, on Friday (tomorrow) children are invited to wear sports uniform/house colours/dress as an athlete, anything that makes them feel ready to run and move! Each hub will have an opportunity to take part in some activities, followed by sharing some delicious fresh fruit as a team. 

Feast of Saint Mary MacKillop - Friday 6th August

Our annual celebration of the Feast of Saint Mary MacKillop will take place next week. Unfortunately we can't invite all families onsite due to COVID restrictions on large gatherings, though if you're taking a walk past you might just smell some snags being cooked up for our children. 

100 year celebrations

Our beautiful school is 100 years young next year. We are beginning to plan for our 100 year celebrations. As mentioned in a previous newsletter we have engaged Justine McAllister, a local artist to create a mural on the shelter shed wall facing the farm - this mural will tell the story of 100 years. We invite families to chat together and draw/write what St John's means for you on the piece of paper which was sent home today. Justine will use these sketches from families, children and parishioners to inspire the final mural. 

Staff Professional Learning Day

We have rescheduled our Staff Professional Learning Day for Friday 3rd September. OSHClub will run on this day for any families who require their service. 

Thank you for your support as we navigated our way through lockdown as a community. We feel grateful to be together once again. 

Aoife

Acting Principal