Dear St John the Apostle Community,

We recently reviewed how we use SZapp and our website. We cross checked the email addresses registered with SZapp with those in our school database and found that nearly every child has one or more parents registered with SZapp. Great news! Thank you for jumping on board.

Language need not be a barrier

We also discovered that most families who had not connected to SZapp had English is an additional language or dialect. It’s important to us that all families can receive or obtain important information. One of the features of our school website is that it has a language translator, making it more accessible for everyone. We will work with these particular families directly to help them connect succesfully. If you personally know of a family who may not be using SZapp because of a language barrier, please also help them out and show them its benefits. 

Too many 'pings'

We also heard from a couple of parents that they switched off the notifications because they were receiving them too often. I also don't like looking at my phone every time it pings through the day. To help make this easier we have decided to limit the delivery of notifications to 9.15am and 3.00pm. This way parents receive them early after dropping children at school or around pick up time. This makes it easier for parents to respond if they need to and deal with any school related issues. It also means that if you receive a notification outside of those times you will know it is important.

I also encourage everyone to go into the 'Manage' section of SZapp and select the relevant class groups they wish to receive notifications from. It will help to eliminate any unnecessary notifications for you.

One calendar to rule them all!

You may have noticed that the First Day Byte did not come out this term. Our feedback is that there are too many places to look at for calendar information including the SZapp, school website, Term Overviews and First Day Byte. It can be confusing when events have been changed or added and the paper versions no longer reflect what is happening.

From this term, we are concentrating our efforts on our online calendar, the calendar that appears on SZapp and the school website. Leanne updates it each Monday with the most recent information provided to her by staff. It is now the one and only place to find the most accurate dates and times.

A responsible use of resources

We really do want to make sure we have a more sustainable environmental footprint and not waste our school budget. Therefore, we want to be as paperless as possible. An increasing number of our permission forms will now be on SZapp and less and less sent home on paper.

We hope these few changes will help streamline communication a little more and make it easier for a smooth, refined sharing of school inofmration.

Matthew Garton, Principal