Dear St. Clare’s Community,

Thank you all for such a great start to 2024! The weeks seem to be going by so very quickly, and everyone has hit the ground running. As always there is so much to squeeze into a term. Mrs Chappel organised a beautiful celebration for our opening Mass, with a lot more in store with Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and St. Patrick’s Day on the horizon. We have sports galore on offer, with Rugby & Netball coaching sessions, not to mention all the Peninsula tryouts and our Cross Country Carnival on Tuesday 19th March. Mrs Vipiana and a group of volunteers have made sure that Friday Tuckshop is great as always. Mrs Irvine has been busy getting into classrooms and introducing students to our new Lego Robotics Kits. On top of all of this we even managed to engage in our learning,  thanks to our amazing teachers and school officers that put so much work into planning, preparing and delivering engaging lessons to our students.

School Annual Improvement Plan (SAIP)

Each year we have key focus areas of improvement and the following are our  SMART goals for 2024:

1. By the end of 2024, we will have evidence of increased student engagement and achievement, by delivering a contemporary and relevant Religious Education curriculum that includes informed theological understandings of Scripture presented to students, dialogical pedagogies and opportunities for personal encounter through a variety of personal and communal prayer experiences.
2. By the end of 2024, 100% of students will have demonstrated growth in the end of year PAT Testing in Reading, Vocabulary, Spelling and SWST (Spelling) for P-2.

Student Absences

We will be working on improving our attendance rates as one of our school wide goals this year. Our attendance goal is to have zero unexplained absences. If your student is away for any reason, please contact the office. If you do forget to let us know, you will receive a SMS notification that your child is absent. Please contact the school upon receiving these messages, as it lets us know your child is indeed safe at home and you are aware of their absence. Cairns Catholic Education has a system wide goal that 90% of our students attend school 90% of the time. Over the last few years this has been quite a difficult goal with the interruptions and restrictions we have been impacted by. Our attendance rate to date for 2024 is 82.5% have attended 90% (or more) of the time.

Prep Enrolments for 2025

It seems early to be discussing enrolments for 2025 BUT if you have a child born between 1/7/2019 and 30/6/2020, your child is eligible to start Prep in 2025. Please go to our website to complete an online enrolment - https://www.stclares.qld.edu.au/enrolling/enrolment-application/. We already have a very high number of enrolment applications for 2025. It is extremely important to us that our existing families do not miss out. If you have a child ready for Prep 2025, please complete an online enrolment application ASAP, if you have not already done so.

Volunteer Training

Have you completed volunteer training?  All parents assisting with sport training, tuckshop, sport days, transport, excursions, classroom assistance etc need to complete the training found on the Catholic Education website. Go to: https://www.cns.catholic.edu.au/our-school-communities/parent-engagement/volunteer-training/

Important Safety Reminders

Children must not walk through the car park area unless accompanied by an adult.  Parents must meet children at the ramp to walk them to the car. Do not call your children to your car or into the carpark as this is unsafe. Please also note that children need to be accompanied by an adult when crossing Mars Street. Staff will not let children cross Mars St to a parked car on the opposite side of the school.

Parents using the pick-up zone on Mars St. are asked not to leave their cars to assist children. If your child requires assistance to get in the car, please park elsewhere and walk over to collect our child.

The street in front of the two schools in Mars Street has signs that indicate u-turns are prohibited. Please adhere to this as it is for the safety of everyone.

Sent to the Principal's Office

Over the past two weeks I have had a number of visitors to my office. This year I am lucky enough to have students sent to my office to show me some of their outstanding efforts and achievements. It is such a delight for me to share in the success of our students and see some of the wonderful things that our teachers do each and every day. The students pictured below all blew me away with their work over the past two weeks! Keep an eye out for a ‘Sent to the Principal’s office’ card to see if your child paid me a visit.

I will be taking some Long Service Leave from Thursday 22nd February - Wednesday 28th February. If anything urgent arises during this time that you need to contact me for, please direct your questions to Sharon Chappel (APRE).

Blessings for the weeks ahead,

Karran Burzacott