24th August, Week 6, Term 3

From Our Principal - Mr Brendan Moloney

Dear Families,

While we are celebrating BOOK WEEK this week we look forward to the following week as Father’s Day approaches. We will be celebrating our Father’s Day Breakfast and Mass on Thursday 31^st August, we invite you to join us for our celebrations. Our Father’s Day Stall will be held on Tuesday 29^th August.

Our BOOK WEEK Parade was a massive success with many wonderful costumes on display from our staff, students and visitors. The Book Fair will continue to be available until early next week. If you are at the school, please feel free to come and have a wonder around and look at our brilliant display, this includes writing pieces and portraits of our students.

It was also wonderful to have the Coraki CWA Pre-school, Mid Richmond Play Group and the Retirement Village come and join in our celebrations for Book Week.

Tell Them From Me Feedback

In a previous newsletter we were able to provide you with some of the wonderful feedback families provided us as part of our Tell Them From Me survey data. This week we have provided some of the feedback to two questions, included below.

Please tell us how we could possibly support families to improve school attendance?

Please tell us what you feel are some of the barriers to consistent school attendance?

Provide all students & families with a safe place to discuss their issues & concerns, be able to provide families with necessary school items & food that families may not be able to make, provide a lower income fees rate for all families to pay off fees, provide more cultural awareness within the school so staff members, families & all students agree with in order for them to feel comfortable.

We hope that the environment that we create here at St. Joseph’s is one that people feel comfortable with in order to discuss any issues and concerns they may have. Our team is always available should anyone wish to meet with them. We have lunch packs and fruit available to all students. Facilities are available for fee payment arrangements; families simply need to contact the school office to arrange these. Cultural awareness and developing this across our school community is also a focus within our current 3 Yr. plan. Staff have undertaken and are planning for professional learning in this area, this will continue to be a focus moving forward.

Families may have financial troubles, children may not feel motivated to attend school due to the lack of not being able to have school lunches, correct uniform & personal issues going on in their own home environment.

These are just some of the many challenges facing families, at St Joseph’s we provide lunch packs for students and fruit is also available in all our classrooms, we pride ourselves on the support we provide our students in this area. School fees, we always provide families with the opportunity to come and talk confidentially regarding school fees, this includes payment plans and whilst we encourage school uniform as per our policy, we prefer to have children at school, where they need to be.

Keeping sick kids at home so the whole school doesn’t get it.

Yes, when we have periods of illness this is an unavoidable impact on student attendance. We have seen this recently and appreciate that families do keep their children at home when they are unwell to prevent further spread. Our focus in this area is not when children are sick but when they are not at school without an acceptable reason.

I feel that we are still in active recovery from a natural disaster and housing instability will naturally affect attendance. We are also a community with a largely low-socio economic demographic, so low attendance for some children is a complex challenge that requires a holistic family-centred approach.

Whilst as a community there has been so much achieved from a recovery perspective, this is such a long road, many families continue to struggle and yes this also impacts attendance. This is why we have support structures that include our Family Connect Worker (Cass), School Counsellor (Robyn) and Play Therapy (Nicole) in order to support our students and families as best we can. As previously mentioned  lunch packs are available and uniforms, we would rather children are at school but out of uniform on occasions than not at school.

I believe the recent introduction of a family support worker is an excellent step toward improved attendance. Linking up with community engagement officers at the temporary housing "pod" village to organise transport via housing support case managers or discussing additional barriers flood affected children may be facing. I believe staff at St Joseph's Coraki are doing everything they can to improve general attendance.

Any opportunity to link with services to support school attendance is encouraged, as a school we continue to explore options to connect with services to support. Anyone who has connections that may benefit improved attendance are encouraged to come forward and discuss these options.

2024 Enrolments / Jun. Joey’s

During Term 3 we will begin our Jun. Joey’s Transition Program. This will begin on Friday the 18^th August (Week 5). This is an important program to support the transition of students to Kindergarten and provides the opportunity for them to start to build relationships with school staff and be familiar with the school environment and routines. Any families looking to enrol in Kindergarten for 2024 need to contact the school office to collect their enrolment pack. Enrolment forms need to be completed prior to the start of our Jun. Joey’s Program. Parents are also encouraged to join us for the program.

We ask families to please pass on this opportunity to anyone you may know who is considering St. Joseph’s as an excellent educational choice for their family.

God Bless,

Brendan Moloney

Student Awards Week 5

Kinder News

Kindergartners have been working really hard this term to develop their reading and writing skills. We even looked at how to follow a recipe to make some frozen fruit cups. The kids had a great time, and they tasted amazing as well!!

Mr O'Brien

Sports News

Stage 3 Multi Sport Gala Day

Library News

BOOK WEEK BOOK WEEK BOOK WEEK BOOK WEEK BOOK WEEK BOOK WEEK 

A big thank you everyone for supporting our Book Week celebrations and Book Fair!

Book Fair will be here till next Tuesday if you would like to purchase anything.

Enjoy your week

Mrs Cherie Verrall      

General Business

Happy Birthday to the following who have celebrated their birthday since our last newsletter: 

Ashar Youman-Auger, Noah Moran, Zain Mabood,

Shelby De Hoon, Mr Farr