Dear Parents and Guardians,

Time to press the reset button for 2020!

Everyone is looking refreshed and ready for the term. Like many of you I went to Cairns. It was truly wonderful to be able to enjoy being with family and experience the freedom of the releasing of restrictions.

Term 2, 2020 will certainly stay in my mind for a long time, as we dealt with the challenges that COVID 19 forced upon us. What an awesome school community we have at St Joseph’s! What an amazing feat we achieved.

One of our biggest takeaways during this time is the perseverance and adaptability of our staff and the support of our school community. We should always be proud of what we managed to achieve and remember these strengths as we continue striving to provide effective learning and well being for all our students.Our school motto, “Bringing Faith and Learning to Life” truly is a great fit for our school. We are a school that strives to strengthen faith, promote respect and acceptance and builds community at every level throughout the school.

The desire to maintain strong academic standards is an ongoing focus for St Joseph’s. We value prime teaching time and continue to place increasing emphasis on quality teaching and learning within the total curriculum. Staff and students have embraced new ICT initiatives enabling our students to gain exposure to the technology shaping the 21st Century.

With the easing of restrictions, we will be able to start easing back with more school events. So please, watch this space!  We will continue to encourage social distancing and implement the appropriate hygiene practices to keep everyone safe. We will hold our first whole school face to face assembly on the basketball court this Friday. As we still need to continue social distancing for adults, only parents of students receiving class awards are asked to attend at this stage. We look forward to when we can have our usual parent attendance at assembly. We thank you for your support and understanding as we keep to safety regulations.

Your assistance in keeping your child/ren home with any sickness is much appreciated.

Before school procedures – As we begin the term, we are still asking parents to continue to drop off and pick up as we did last term to ensure social distancing of adults so we can minimize the risk of COVID transfer.

Semester 1 report cards will be sent home early next week and as previously mentioned this is a modified report card due to COVID 19.  If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to discuss with your child’s classroom teacher.  We will schedule parent teacher interviews for week three.

School Maintenance

Over the school holiday period a great deal of scheduled maintenance has taken place including painting.

Our CES ICT support tech, Jason Mistfud, also visited us to update devices and maintain computers ready for learning this term. Jason also installed a VIV system in each classroom which has improved the quality of the images and access to the interactive screens.

Over the next few weeks we are also looking forward to when a new batch of home readers arrive.

2021 Prep Enrolment

Believe it or not, it is time to commence the year-long process which is the enrolment of our Prep cohort for 2021. As always, we will begin with our siblings before we move forward to inviting new families to join our community.

Our school website is the pathway to the enrolment process which must be completed online.  Children must be 5 by 30 June in the year they enrol (2021). I encourage you to attend to this process as soon as possible.  Our friendly office staff are always happy to support and answer any questions you may have regarding your child’s enrolment. 

NAIDOC Celebrations 2020 postponed

The National NAIDOC Committee has decided to postpone NAIDOC Week 2020 from 5 July to 8 November. NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life. The week is a great opportunity to participate in a range of activities and to support your local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.  

Communication is an important vehicle between the family and the school and I cannot stress enough the importance of you reading the newsletter, accessing schoolzine app, school Facebook page and the correspondence sent home from your child’s teacher. These forms of communication are our main means of keeping you informed with what is happening around the school. Teachers can be contacted via email or by calling the office to make an appointment. If you need to contact your class teacher urgently, please phone the school reception.  As you would be aware, teachers are unable to meet with you once the bell has gone as they are responsible for the students in their class.

Wishing you a great term full of happiness and learning,

God Bless,

Megan