Principal's Notes

Education and the Federal Election
As you will be aware the Federal election will be held this Saturday, 18 May 2019. As always Catholic education does not advocate or direct votes for any party. We do seek to ensure everyone who is interested is well informed on policies relevant to education. School funding has not been a focus of the election campaign to date and is not expected to feature further in the days remaining in the campaign. In contrast, the policy positions of the major parties with respect to Early Childhood education are substantially different. Much information is available through each party’s website and through news outlets. Alongside this, specific to Catholic education the National Catholic Education Commission (NCEC) has prepared a guide to the federal election on their website with a number of resources.

The links below are available through the NCEC federal election page and provide further information for the 2019 Federal Election. This information has been developed to share with teachers, parents and parishes should you wish:

Thank you Year 6
I must offer my thanks to the Year 6 students for their exceptional work as tour guides last week on our Open Days. We received so many affirming comments about their maturity and ability to articulate their thoughts and feelings. We provided a little training to prepare them and they exceeded our expectations. They are highly effective student leaders.

Carpark Pick Up
We have some procedures and expectations around our pick up time to help make it safe and accessible for parents, students and younger siblings. Please follow these:

Playground equipment is not for use after school. We have one teacher on duty who is watching that every student leaves with a parent and can’t supervise the playground for safe use as well.
Students are to sit under the trees by the fence when waiting for their parents. This ensures that all students are ready for picking up when their parents arrive. Some parents are often fitting the pick-up in along with siblings at other schools.
Parents are to come into the playground to pick up children. Whilst it would be easy to wait in the car we have experienced a number of near misses where cars backing out have nearly hit students or younger siblings. We also need to see that children are leaving with the appropriate person.
Disability parking is at the front of the school. For those seeking to use disability parking for pick up time these parks are now at the front of the school. The front doors are more accessible than the back gate which is often closed and the latch is high.

We know that sometimes rules/procedures such as these can create a little extra effort and we also know that families want us to ensure their children are safe. This is why we set up these types of expectations. I’m sure we can all work together to make our school a safe environment for all.

Mothers’ Day Stall
I hope everyone was able to celebrate and remember their mothers on Sunday. Thank you to those parents who helped the children select and wrap a gift to take home for their own mothers. A special thank you to Barbra Cox from the P&F for her organisation of the stall.

Winter Uniform
Just a reminder that as of Monday 13^th May all students are expected to wear their full winter school uniform. We ask that any additional winter clothing your child wears is navy in colour. Unfortunately we still have a large number of clothing items that are in the lost property box unnamed. Please encourage your children to look through the lost property items for any of their missing belongings. I ask that you label each of your children’s items clearly with their name.