Dear St John's families,

We continue to have pockets of COVID happening across the school. Recently a large group of Year 4 students had positive test results. Thank you to the families in Year 4 who immediately undertook RATs with their unwell children. It has helped to quickly curb any spread .

Staff availability at the moment is tight and teachers are generously giving up their preparation time to cover classes. We have some new relief teachers beginning with us in a few weeks time, which should assist with the pressure. Our goal is to keep students in their classrooms with their teacher and focused on their learning as much as possible.

Year 5 and 6 Camps

Great news! Our Year 5 and 6 students have permission to attend a camp again. I wrote to all families yesterday to let them know. Students were also told and very excited.

To enable this to happen in the most COVID safe way, both groups will be attending Birrigai Outdoor Education Centre on the 8th and 9th September. They will each have separate camp experiences. We look forward to walking alongside them during these experiences.

School Board and Community Council Review

The Catholic Education Commission established a Working Group to review various aspects of Archdiocesan School Board and Community Council models.
 
The Working Group has engaged in targeted consultation with internal stakeholders and has had some preliminary discussions with a narrow group of external stakeholders, including representatives from the Catholic School Parents Archdiocese of Canberra & Goulburn.
 
They are now now seeking to draw on the experiences, expertise and perspectives of parents and carers, school staff and members of school communities through a process of general consultation. An Issues Paper has been drafted outlining the key issues that the Working Group has identified to date and posing a number of discussion questions that the Working Group is seeking responses to.
 
The following link will outline further information from Mr Ross Fox, Director of Catholic Education.   https://cg.catholic.edu.au/school-board-and-community-council-review/foreword/ 

The closing date for submissions is 2 September 2022.

Learning Journeys

In Week 5 we planned to undertake Learning Journeys. Learning Journeys are typically when parents could visit classrooms and their child would show them samples of their work, telling them about their achievements to date and goals for future learning.

To be COVID safe we won't have parents come into the school and have opted to provide families with an at-home Learning Journey. Teachers are currently preparing a set of slides containing examples of their child's learning at school. These slides will be sent to families next Friday and children will be asked to sit with their parents and carers and talk them through the slides, explaining what they have been doing in class.

Where possible, parents and carers will have the opportunity to write a comment to their child, responding to their work and achievments. We encourage you to sit with your child as soon as possible and enjoy their learning.

I hope everyone enjoys the weekend and continues to stay healthy and well.

Matthew Garton