Dear St John the Apostle families,

Congratulations on reaching the end of the school year and thank you for your support for your child's learning throughout 2023.

On Monday evening we celebrated the graduation of our Year 6 students, who have been an exceptional group of student leaders this year. The following day we held a ceremony where these students passed on their student leadership roles to the Year 5 students. It was lovely to have so many parents attend both events and celebrate with their child and the school.

This week we also farewelled a number of staff members in our school, including Inclusion Assistants Tracey Watson-Gardner, Max Monaghan and Alice Wade who have been invaluable members of our Inclusion Team and built such strong and positive relationships with the students they supported. We farewelled 3 Maroon teacher Rachel Pearson who is returning to Queensland to teach. Students have loved having her teach them this term. She has been hard-working, approachable and generous to all of her students and their families. Thank you to all of these staff members for their contributions to our school community.

On Wednesday we held a farewell afternoon tea for Debbie Milne, our Finance Manager. Debbie has been a member of this community for a long time. It began when her children started in 1991. Then in 1999 she began working in the Canteen where she prepared and served recess and lunch to a school population of 500 students. In 2006 Debbie took up the position of Front Office Manager and was the welcoming face of the school for parents, students and staff. Five years ago she began as Finance Manager where she continued to be a rock that many families and staff could rely on. Debbie has been the epitome of organisation, reliability, thoughtfulness and generosity. Past staff members came to honour her at Wednesday's farewell, evidence of the enormous impact Debbie has had on our school. Thank you Debbie. You will be very much missed.

Student Leaders 2024

After learning about leaders and good leadership qualities, identifying the leadership qualities in each other, presenting leadership speeches and voting the Year 6 student leaders for 2024 were finalised.

Congratulations to Olive and Liliana who were selected as School Captains. Both were identified by their peers as fellow students that display many of the leadership qualities they were learning about.

Congratulations to Ky, Blake, Ziva, Jack, Naveli, Will, Ben, Emma, Charlotte S, Sophie, Olivia and Jacob who were selected as Peer Leaders. Six of these students will focus on service within our community and six will focus on service outside our community.

These students will be re-presented at the beginning of next year. I look forward to working with them.

I hope everyone has a safe, joyful and peaceful Christmas and school holidays. We're very much looking forward to seeing everyone at the end of January, rested and ready for the next chapter.

God Bless,

Matthew Garton

Principal

Code Camp in 2024

At the end of this Newsletter you will see a flyer for Code Camp. We have partnered with Code Camp to provide an after school activity each week for those students interested in this part of digital technologies. The flyer outlines the details for how to register. We're excited to be able to offer this opportunity.