Term 3 Week 5 Bulletin
Dear Parents & Guardians
This week, we celebrated the Feast of St Mary Mackillop, currently Australia’s only native saint. St Mary was, in many ways, one of the main founders of the Catholic school system in Australia, and despite many setbacks, challenges and much adversity, she developed a legacy that has benefited many thousands of Australian children over the generations.
St Mary Mackillop is a wonderful example for us to follow. Not only did she champion the leadership of women both in the Church and in the wider Australian society, but reflected the indomitable Australian spirit, demonstrating the courage to persevere when things were difficult or hard. She showed genuine care for those who were less fortunate, actively modelling her famous quote, ‘never see a need without doing something about it.’ She stood up for what was right despite the opposition she faced and ultimately, triumphed in adversity.
DISMISSAL & CHANGE TO THE SCHOOL DAY
If you did not read the bulletin and the letter sent out to parents last week regarding the changes to the school day and the new dismissal procedures that will start in Week 8 (from August 28), it is important that you make yourselves aware of these changes.
It is also vital that all parents and guardians take the time to complete the Google Form that was sent out last week, indicating the area or gate where you will collect your children. There are a lot of parents and guardians that have not yet completed this – you must complete this by the end of the week. This will avoid a great deal of extra work for our admin team in having to call all these parents to get this information.
It is also really important that we use our Kiss n’ Go as much as possible as this will help reduce the number of children being collected from the gates. I have noticed that there are too many parents and guardians dropping their children off on Waterway Boulevard rather than using the Kiss n’ Go. While this might save you a few extra seconds of waiting, it also creates additional risk for our children by causing extra traffic on Waterway Boulevard, which in turn leads to some parents and guardians double parking or dropping their children off in the road (which is obviously not safe). Parking on Waterway Boulevard should only be for parents and guardians who are walking their children into school.
This will become even more important in Term Four as our next building project, our Stage Three Admin and learning building will start construction on the corner of Waterway and Oldbridge Boulevard. The safety of our children is our primary concern, and we need the support of all parents and guardians in following the school procedures for the safe collection and drop off of our children.
I thought you might be interested to see some of the designs for our new building:
BOOK WEEK
Keep remembering Book Week in Week 7, from August 21 – 24.
Also, please remember that Friday August 25 is a student-free day for all students.
BUMP IT UP WALL INFORMATION NIGHT
As part of our Book Week, we will hold an information night for parents and guardians to explain our new Bump it up Wall writing strategy and how this is being used in the classrooms to support and inform the learning and the progress of your children. This information night will be on Thursday, August 24 @ 6.00pm. I hope you make time to come along and talk to the teachers about how this is being used.
FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION
The Feast of the Assumption is a holy day of obligation in the Church year and consequently, we will be celebrating mass with Fr. Wilford, (our new Assistant Parish Priest) on Tuesday, August 15. I would really love to see lots of parents and guardians come to celebrate mass with us.
SCHOOL UNIFORMS, JEWELERY AND STUDENTS HAIR
We have tried to be reasonable and tolerant in relation to our students school uniform, however, we are noticing some trends that are beginning to creep into the school uniform behaviours that need to be addressed with our community. We are mindful that parents are busy, and there might be occasions where our children do not bring quite the right uniform to school, however this should not become the norm.
The children should not be wearing brightly coloured trainers to school each day – the school footwear code is black shoes or trainers. Likewise, students should not be coming to school with brightly coloured tights or pants as this is not part of our uniform code. We would strongly prefer parents and guardians to purchase the correct school bag, not least because this is correctly designed for children to wear as opposed to the bags other general retailers might supply.
There are aspects of our uniform expectations that are determined by health and safety requirements but there are requirements that reflect the fact we are a Catholic school. Children should not be wearing make- up to school, nor should they be wearing long or dangly earrings (this is a significant health and safety risk, especially during playtime or sport). Only studs, sleepers or small hooped earring should be worn.
Likewise, long necklaces are a health and safety risk. Any necklaces worn should only be worn if they have a crucifix rather than other religious symbols. As a school, we welcome and celebrate the fact that some of our children and their families practice other faith beliefs, however, we are quite clearly a Catholic school, and this must be reflected in the symbols that are seen around our school. This is a clear expectation from our governing authority and is a commitment to which all parents and guardians agreed when they enrolled their children at St Lawrence of Brindisi.
It is also a health and safety requirement (and common to all schools), that any child with long hair wears their hair tied up. Please make sure this is how your child is sent to school if this applies to them.
A final (and much repeated) request is for all uniform items to be clearly labelled. I have said this before, but I think our lost uniform pile is breeding and most of the items have no names. I suspect I could clothe much of Weir Views with the number of lost clothes we have in our pile! (this always amazes me, given the cost of uniforms!).
With 280 children at school, it is simply impossible for us to return them to the right child if they are not clearly marked. We are noticing lots of cold children outside because they have lost or misplaced their jumpers or jackets and we cannot match theirs to them.
If you have any questions about the uniform, please ask us or speak to Emma in the office – she is our uniform expert (along with a group of our amazing parents when we opened, she was responsible for most of it).
God bless,
Bill Hill.
PRINCIPAL