Dear Parents and Carers,

Congratulations to our wonderful Year 6 students who celebrated their Graduation last week and to the Year 5 students who will now be taking over the reigns as school leaders for 2022. We were fortunate to be able to sneak in (between rain events) and hold our leadership ceremony and guard of honour (socially distanced!) Thank you to our Year 6 teachers for organising the Year 6 Fun Day and to Mr Webb for starting it off with a great cooked breakfast! Our Rainbow awards winners had a lovely day yesterday with water fun, special lunch and activities, thanks to everyone who helped out with the organisation.

I published teachers and classes for 2022 earlier in the term. Some late staffing changes have meant that we have needed to adjust classes across the school. Earlier this week we farewelled Mrs Yvette Whalan, Miss Nadia Farhadi and Mrs Sarah Anderson these teachers will always have a special place in our community, and we thank them for their dedication to teaching and care of our students. We will be farewelling Mrs Lisa Monro in the new year as she will be starting 2022 with us.

We are excited to welcome Mrs Lynda Logan as our Front Office Manager for 2022. Lynda is currently the Office Manager for Charnwood ELC and has great experience in our Catholic system.  She will be working with Lisa during February to ensure we have a strong handover of information.  We also welcome Shianne Sahariv to our teaching staff; Shianne has just completed her degree from the ACU she has a huge amount of current knowledge and has been working in various roles in Catholic schools while studying.  She is thrilled to be joining us and teaching her own class. Rhys Mooney and Maria Sanchez-Worsnop will be joining us as classroom support assistants. They too have great experience in schools and will be part of our wonderful Classroom Support Team headed by Bridgette McCann. Congratulations also to Bridgette who will be taking on the Coordinator role next year.

The class lists are now finalised, and I thank the teachers for their efforts in catering for the needs of all students and families. Students will meet their teachers on Friday and our new families and Kindergarten students will be visiting on Thursday 27 January. We will publish a full staff list in our first newsletter next year.

Kindergarten K: Miss Natasha Kapantais

Kindergarten D: Miss Victoria De Mattia

Year 1/2H: Ms Jessica Hallahan/ Mr Damien Webb

Year 1/2B: Mrs Shannon Blakey

Year 3/4L: Miss Jessica Lewis

Year 3/4F: Miss Laura Frogley

Year 5/6Y: Ms Meaghan Younger/ Mrs Erin Hardwicke

Year 5/6B: Mrs Ritu Budhraja

Year 5/6S: Miss Shianne Sahariv

Reminder that all fees and unexplained absences will need to be finalised before the end of the week.  If you have any queries, please contact Lisa in the Front Office.

Today we are excited to send you the link to our Digital Highlights of the 2021 School Year. Despite lock down, we celebrated many wonderful events and were able to keep some digital records that we can share with you. In the face of challenges and hardships our community remained resilient, collaborative and full of hope. The digital highlights are a wonderful testimony to our collective enthusiasm for life and learning.

Thank you to Fr Loi and our Parish Team our dedicated and professional staff, our Community Council and all our wonderful and supportive families. May you all experience a blessed Christmas with your families and loved ones and may the love of the baby Jesus fill you with peace, hope and joy.

Safe travels, stay well and we will see you in 2022, for a wonderful new year!

Many blessings,

Judy Egan

Principal