Dear Parents,

Welcome back to Term 3! I hope that you all had an enjoyable and restful break and were able to spend some quality time together as a family.

It is great to see everyone back at school and we all have our fingers crossed that we can continue to teach and learn on site. Being on site allows the teachers to create a challenging yet supportive learning environment that targets the specific learning needs of your child. As a staff, we strive to meet these individual needs and are driven to provide teaching and learning opportunities that accelerate the academic progress of all. Whilst parents are still unable to visit school due to the current restrictions, we value the important role you play in your child’s development. To ensure we continue this partnership between home and school, please contact the school and arrange to talk with myself or your child’s teacher if you have any questions or concerns.

In light of the current outbreak of COVID-19 in Melbourne, we are continuing with the precautions that we had in place last term. Please be mindful of others when dropping off or picking up your child and adhere to social distancing expectations. At school, the students will continue to utilise good hygiene habits and increased cleaning of school equipment and high traffic areas will continue throughout the day.

We understand that for working parents, having sick children can create stress, however it is vitally important that you keep your child home from school if they are showing any of the following symptoms:

-fever

-chills or sweats

-cough

-sore throat

-shortness of breath

-runny nose

-loss of sense of smell

If your child exhibits any of these symptoms during the school day, you will be contacted and asked to arrange for them to be picked up.

Heesco Mural

Thank you to those families that have shared their thoughts and ideas on the design of our Heesco mural. We have already had some kind donations from families and businesses and the planning is under way. Hopefully I will be able to share some more information with you about this in the coming weeks. We are very excited by this project and believe it will be a great addition to our school.

Enrolments

Enrolments are now open for 2021. All families that have a child starting Foundation next year are encouraged to enrol now. An enrolment form can be picked up from the school office or downloaded from our school website. We have had a number of enquiries, however if you know of any new families who may be interested in starting at St Mary’s, please encourage them to contact the school. School tours are available after school hours by appointment and we welcome the opportunity to showcase what a great school St Mary’s is.

Kind regards,

Joel