Dear St John's families,

It is with sadness that I inform the school community of the death of Mrs Amber Anderson, wife of Jamie and mother of Tom (1 Blue) and Emily (6 Maroon).

Amber, an extraordinarily generous and kind person, battled cancer for quite some time before it finally took her from family and friends.

We ask you please to keep Amber's family in your thoughts and prayers as they journey through this very sad time.

Book Week

We've had a lovely week with the celebration of Book Week. Thank you to our colourful Teacher Librarian, Mrs Alcock, for all of her work in celebrating with our students.

Today we enjoyed our fun-filled dress up parade. It was really wonderful to welcome parents and family members back onto the school site to have fun with us. Thank you to all our parents and grandparents for helping the children come to school dressed up. It can be a little stressful to come up with a costume idea and I really appreciate the effort everyone made.

Schools as Gender Inclusive Communities

Today I attended the annual meeting of all Principals, Priests and Religious Education Coordinators in our Archdiocese. The focus of the meeting was on a recently drafted Australian Catholic Bishops framework statement on gender and sexuality, titled Created and Loved, and the resulting guidelines about gender inclusion for all schools. Throughout the meeting we were reminded that Catholic Schools continue to be places of love, inclusion and compassion. I look forward to sharing more with you as these documents are finalised.

Fathers Day Breakfast

We're pleased to invite our families to a Fathers Day Breakfast from 7.30am on Wednesday 31 August. We have the Shot Clock Espresso Coffee Van coming and our wonderful Merchant's Feast partners will be providing fresh donuts. To help us ensure we have enough food we ask you to RSVP at the link below:

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.

Thank you for a great week everyone. We look forward to another week of learning and growing.

Matthew Garton