Mrs Ryan's Fortnightly Reflections

Welcome to Book Week 2022 everyone - Dreaming with eyes open! A week to celebrate the love of reading and literature. This has definitely been a focus this week from within our classrooms and now tomorrow with our book parade! Our staff this week have taken the opportunity to share their own favourite books with all of the students and have read them over the PA system prior to lunch. Thank you to all families who are supporting their children in dressing up tomorrow with a book also close to their hearts! 

 

Over the past fortnight St Mary’s continues to thrive with a focus on learning with our Year 3 - 6 representing our school community beautifully and enthusiastically at the Campaspe Interschool sports. Our students were great sports people and represented St Mary’s with pride. Our Year ¾ students even came home as the overall winners and returned to school chanting their success! 

 

This week we hosted our Prep 2023 families and students in our second Prep Community connection session. This week we had Mrs Kilborn shine as Mrs Wishy Washy and engaged the preps in story, arts and crafts. Many mum’s and dad’s stayed and had a chat and a cuppa! Our Prep 2023 students were impressive in how settled and school ready they were! We look forward to seeing them more regularly in term 4 over Transition. 

 

St Mary’s, like all catholic schools, collects fees from families as we are not funded to the extent as state schools. As parents, when we enrol our children at St Mary’s we agree and commit to pay and contribute fees to the school. St Mary’s is governed by Catholic Education Sandhurst, whose policy is our approach to how we set and collect fees from families. Currently, our collection processes are being reviewed and refined for the future and will share this with families as soon as possible. In the meantime our administration staff are sending out invoices and following up with families regarding payments of fees before we reach the end of the year. I am always available to families who may be in financial hardship and need to discuss fee payment options. 

 

St Mary’s is a child safe school and we pride ourselves on ensuriung we are doing all that we can to keep our students safe at all times. St Mary’s is private property and we hope to keep our yards and students as safe as possible. This week we have increased our vigilance on yard duty and monitoring our boundaries. We are also exploring increased security for our school site with the possibility of CCTV in the event an incident occurs. 

 

St Mary’s as a community are diving deep into our strategic and master plans. Both plans have required us to seek voice from our student and parent community as well as the entire staff body. Our strategic plan is currently using data and evidence to look for strengths and growth areas and what direction we need to take into the future. The strategic plan explores learning and teaching, resources and facilities and how we connect and contribute to our community. Our Master plan is being facilitated by our architect Gray and Puksand and we are also at a point where we are seeking stakeholder input to ensure we have collective input! Both plans have allowed rigorous discussion and exciting opportunities for St Mary’s. 

 

Next week is Week 8, with only 3 weeks of the winter term left! We have St Mary’s infamous production on the horizon to end our term. Mrs Larkin and Mrs Stewart are working so hard to ensure the students are ready to shine! I personally can’t wait to see our students up there being courageous and sharing their gifts and talents with us all! Tickets go on sale Monday 29th August 9.00am for families so please be sure to purchase as soon as you can! 

 

A final reminder that St Mary’s Parish is hosting its Expo this Friday night from 5:00pm. It is a great opportunity to come and meet Father Novie if you have not already or simply reconnect with our parish community! It would be great to see as many of our families there as possible. 

 

God Bless & Stay Well

Jasmine Ryan 

Principal