Dear Parents, Grandparents, Carers and Friends,

As mentioned in last week's newsletter, the school year has started off in a rather positive way. Thank you to all the families who were able to come along to our ‘Meet and Greet’ last Friday evening.

In the past, we have had more structured information evenings at the beginning of the year, but since last year we have introduced this relaxed ‘mingle’ evening where the focus is more on us celebrating our community and it seems to be the best way to start each year. We have had lots of positive feedback on the open classrooms, great food and the fun that was had by all at the disco.

A huge thank you to Emily and Kate our ‘Disco Queens’!  We saw some great moves on the dance floor and the kids really loved the choice of music. It was a great idea to add in the songs from last year’s dance and to finish with the school song.

At St Joseph’s we are truly blessed to have such a wonderful school community. At our Assembly this week Year 4 reminded us to count our blessings. We are blessed to have such a well-designed, contemporary and well-resourced learning space, expansive grounds, excellent teachers and staff who are committed to our student’s success and wellbeing. One of our greatest blessings is our partnership with parents and families. We consider this partnership as crucial in the education of each student and for the school being actively involved in the local community. 

On Thursday 9^th March we will be having our Parents and Friends AGM and I encourage you to attend.  Over the last few years, we have struggled to get an executive together, which is surprising when family attendance at our events is always close to 100% and our school is full of caring and committed people who often chip in and help out when called upon.

We have discussed this often at our P&F meetings and after acknowledging the changing nature of families and schools and evolving ways of working together, we are looking at creating a Parent Engagement Network, this model combinations what would have been known as a school board and the school P&F.  

Although we have done the groundwork to for the establishment of a school board in 2022,  we not currently have a school board so our P&F would be a place where, with the support of CES and share knowledge from other schools who have made this change, we can explore and work through the process for a transition from P&F to Parent Engagement Network throughout the year.

We invite you to become directly involved in the establishment of St Joseph’s Parent Engagement Network so we can provide an avenue for parents and families to come together and be informed, consulted, engaged and learn in relation to planning, policy, decision making and educational programs.

Establishing a Parent Engagement Network will assist in:

• developing a positive and affirming community spirit
• supporting the work of the principal and staff
• providing feedback to the principal and staff
• promoting consultation between home and school, parents and teachers
• encouraging parent/family engagement with their child's learning and school life
• deepening parent/family understanding of teaching and learning programs
• promoting the school in the wider community
• the provision of resources to promote the educational program

The process of establishing the Parent Engagement Network begins with the continuation of our P&F. If you are interested in supporting the St Joseph’s school community and directly helping to shape our schools future, please come along to our P& F AGM on the 9^th March and consider taking on an executive positions. We recognise there can be barriers for families to attending meetings, so we will be providing childcare and dinner at our meetings hoping this will make it easier for as many parents as possible to attend.

Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead.

Megan

SCHOOL FEES

Next week Genelle Santos, our finance Officer who is based in Cairns, will be visiting Weipa on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please feel free to call and make a time to pop in and see Genelle if you have any questions that need clarification or if you would like to discuss fees.

At St Joseph’s we aim to keep our fees as low as possible to ensure a quality Catholic education is available to all families, The school's Term 1 School Fees will be sent out via email within the next few weeks. Please check your junk mail folders in case this email is directed to it.