Dear Parents and Carers,

We have begun the 2022 school year with a calm and settled return for all our staff and students. It has been most exciting to welcome 90 student enrolments and 8 new families to our St Patrick’s School, this year. Our enrolment numbers are steadily increasing each year and we thank all staff, students and parents who are talking St Patrick’s ‘up’ in the local community and encouraging more families to come and be part of this vibrant and exciting school community.

A special welcome is extended to our 14 new Kindergarten children. We are excited to be partnering with their families as they begin their educational journey here at St Patrick’s. Welcome Lola, Lucy, Clancy, Isabella, Claudia, Lottie, Imogen, Josie, Toby, Ryan, Harley, Phoenix, Lance and Billy. A special welcome also, to the Eccleston, Nicholls, Robinson, Crowe, Nicholls, Smart and Worldon families, who have joined our school community.

We also welcomed two other new families to our school, the Robinson and Huang families. Chase and Jimmy Robinson join our Year 4 and Year 2 classes while Ryan and Sophia join our Year 5 and Year 4 classes.

The 2022 school year begins under another cloud as COVID alters our processes again and we work to meet the current restrictions.  As always, we aim to keep our communication as factual and as practical as possible. It is hard to build school community when we are asking parents and family members to stay out of our school grounds, however we continue to follow advice from the NSW Government and NSW Health, to be able to provide the safest environment for our students to continue learning onsite.

Each day you will receive a notification of the current COVID cases from the last 24 hours at our school, identified by cohorts.  While we can provide this information, we are unable to provide any further information on any student that test positive as this would constitute a breach of privacy. We can assure families that we are following all protocols such as regular use of hand sanitiser, wearing surgical masks, ventilating rooms, placing students in cohorts to minimise interactions and movement to help keep our staff and students safe. We continue to encourage primary school students to also wear masks indoors.

RATS Tests are the other safeguard for our school community. Thank you to staff and families for continuing to support us by performing the twice weekly tests. Early days are showing very little impact on our classes, and we hope and pray that this might continue.  We are working closely with our neighbouring Catholic Schools and CE to have contingencies in place should the situation change.

Once again, our staff have rallied to be well prepared for any eventuality that may take place this term and to make our beginning of school as smooth and as “normal” as they can.  I would like to extend a very big thank you to each and every member of staff for their resilience and energy that they have put into making the start of the school year such a positive one for our students.

We look forward to celebrating our Opening School Mass this Friday and inducting our new school leaders.

Christine Baron

Principal

St Patrick, Pray for Us