Principal's Page
Dear Families,
Welcome back to Term Two. I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Easter and holiday. This is a short term with many wonderful learning and community events planned.
It is not just students that set goals but staff also. After focusing on getting to know students and staff in first term, my goal for this term is to get to the know the parent community more and listen to your experiences, wonderings and aspirations for St Joseph's School Community.
ANZAC Day
Thank you to everyone who was able to join the ANZAC Day March on Monday. It was wonderful to see so many honour and remember all people who have died or served our country in wars, conflicts and peace keeping operations.
Changes to COVID Safe measures for Schools
From 11.59 pm Friday 22 April, face masks, while recommended, are not required in any school setting. This means students in grades 3 to 6, staff and visitors in primary schools are no longer required to wear face masks. Any student or staff member who wishes to wear a mask may do so, including those who are medically at-risk.
Screening requirements
Students and staff who have tested positive for COVID-19, and have completed their 7-day isolation period, now do not need to undertake rapid antigen test (RAT) screening for 12 weeks after their release from isolation. This was previously 8 weeks.
Household contacts
Students and staff who are household contacts of a COVID-19 case are no longer required to quarantine. They can return to school as long as they undertake rapid antigen tests (RAT) 5 times within their 7-day period and wear face masks indoors if they are aged 8 and above unless they have a valid exemption.
If any household contact returns a positive RAT result during this period, they must isolate for 7 days and not attend school.
Vaccination requirements for visitors to schools
Parents, carers and other adult visitors (not performing work) are no longer required to show evidence of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
RAT screening program reminder
RATs will continue to be supplied for the first four weeks of school this term to support the early detection of COVID in our school. The testing recommendation remains the same with mainstream schools recommended to test at home twice a week.
Child Safety
Please remember that staff are not on duty until 8:45am. For the safety of all students, please do not drop any students in the playground before this time.
Grandparent/Special Friend Day
Please ask Grandparents & special friends to note Friday 3 June in their calendars for Grandparent/Special Friend Day. We will be asking them to share a game that they used to play when they were a child with us.
A Family Challenge
The administration area has had a make over during the holidays. Our new display has welcome written in many languages. We will give a shout out in the next newsletter to any students who are able to identify all the languages accurately. This could be a great family activity.
School Reports
We are in the process of designing our Semester 1 Student Reports. We are inviting you to have some input into what information you would like included in these reports. If you would like to contribute, send an email to office@sjsorrento.catholic.edu.au with your thoughts.
Happy Mother's Day for Sunday 8 May.
Enjoy your week,
Monica
moshannassy@sjsorrento.catholic.edu.au