Dear Parents and Carers 

Finally an official welcome back to everyone. It has been wonderful to have our community back together, we are looking forward to welcoming our parents back on site in the near future. Revised COVID restrictions are attached to this newsletter. Recently the staff have working on developing our school’s Vision and Mission statements, which are collaboratively developed and express our community’s 'Vision' of the environment that we are creating at St Mary’s and the Mission, the way we intend to make this a reality. As part of this process, we have identified the values that we believe are inherent in the way every person is treated within our school community. It will be no surprise to hear that some of the standout values identified include:

Compassion, Dignity, Creativity, Inclusion, Joy ,Community. 

These are some of the values that guide our direction and decision making in our very special community of St Mary’s School. We look forward to sharing our draft Vision and Mission with you shortly. This week our school website has had a relaunch with lots of beautiful photos and up to date information regarding our school. If you have not had a look already here is the link, you may recognise some lovely faces! St Mary's Star of the Sea School Website. 

Our P & F is such a vital organisation within our school, and behaind the events and fundraising there is a band of devoted community minded individuals. For over five years, our P and F has been lead with enormous enthusiasm and dedication by Jodie Lee as President. Jodie has been integral in community building and creating a sense of belonging and joy in our school, Jodie has recently made the decision to step down as president. She is completing her final Prac placement to qualify as a teacher, therefore has moved her focus to launching a new career path. We thank Jodie for her incredible service to our our community, Anneliese Robinson will step in as our President until our AGM early next year. There will be a P & F meeting this Monday night at 5:30pm at the school it would be lovely to welcome you!  

Tomorrow we will be hosting STEM Day (Science Technology Engineering Maths), Katy Reid has been leading this curriculum area in our school with great expertise and passion. Tomorrow will be lots of fun and great learning including rocket making, drone flying and design and make tasks. Also look out on facebook for the astounding Watermelon Challenge that took place last week, it was an explosive finish! 

As Term Four rushes quickly to a close there are many events and activities that occur and even more after our extended period of remote learning. We have our wonderful Year 6 group preparing to transition to High School and our lovely preschoolers getting ready to start their St Mary’s school journey through Kindergarten orientation. It is a time of great excitement for many but it can also be also be a time of anxiety as children step into the new and unknown. We are here to support students and parents through this important part of their journey, let us know if we can help in any way. 

I look forward to seeing many of you at parent pickup in the afternoons, enjoy your week as this beautiful part of the world opens up to our wider community again. 

Yours in partnership

Laurinda Nelson