Dear St John the Apostle families,

Congratulations to 1 Maroon teacher Mr James Doepel who is getting married today! We wish he and Ellie all the very best with their celebration. Mr Doepel returns next Thursday to his class. Thank you to Ms Sharon Hardy who has been teaching 1 Maroon in his absence.

Harmony Week

Next Week is our Harmony Week where we get to celebrate the cultural diversity of Australia and our local community.

To celebrate we will hold a few activities on Friday 25 March. Mrs Macdonald has been teaching students a song and we have a few class based activities organised. We would also like to encourage all students to dress in an item that is orange or represents their own cultural background. 

On the day we are going to ask children to tell us where in the world their family may have an identified history, particularly if they speak another language sometimes at home. It would be very helpful if parents could clarify this for their children before Friday.

Did you know that across our school our students speak over 25 different languages at home as either their main language or an additional language to English! I didn't have the opportunity to do this as a child and I would have loved to. Other than English the most widely spoken languages spoken at home are Hindi, Vietnamese and Dinka. We also have students who speak Finnish, French, Tongan, Japanese, Igbo, Dzongkha and a number of others! How fortunate they are and how fortunate for our community.

Rise in COVID positive Cases

We have a large number of COVID positive cases in Year 6 at the moment. Thank you to all of our parents who are diligently monitoring their child for symptoms and regularly undertaking testing. Your actions support not just your child but also help reduce any impact for the rest of the school community.

At present the COVID positive case in other year levels are very isolated incidents, most likely developed from outside the school context and the risk of infection for other students in their class is quite low.

Would you like to be involved but can't commit to being on the Community Council?

At the last Community Council meeting we discussed the Council’s focus areas for this year:

• building community engagement within the school as well as the broader community,
• fundraising and
• development of the outdoor playground.

Community Council members are forming working groups to develop ideas for each of these areas but these groups are not limited to Community Council members only. If you are interested in being involved please send an email to sjapscommunitycouncil@gmail.com and we’ll be in touch very soon.

God bless,

Matthew Garton