Dear Parents and Carers

Our Community Council met this week. One priority was to finalise our new 'Financial support for families of students representing St Patrick's' process. Thank you to the families that have inquired about support. We are pleased to have our school process finalised and the in-kind financial support of the Community Council for our families. Please see the document at the end of the newsletter. A separate skoolbag message will be sent, and give you access to this document (paper copies will be available from the school office). 

We also discussed pastoral care and wellbeing at St Pat's. We looked at current programs and practice and discussed other ideas for consideration. If you have some ideas we would appreciate your input via the simple 2 question survey in Skoolbag forms. Thank you.

Staffing at St Pat's You may be wondering how the teacher shortage that has been reported for some time is impacting on our school. In short, it is. In a little more detail, we now have only one available and active relief teacher for each day, and several who are sometimes or sporadically available. Mrs Sheahan, Mrs Grant, Mrs Ferris (on her leadership days) and I sometimes take classes for a specialist lesson or part of a day; sometimes we have to split the class and provide learning for them in another classroom. The dedication of our teachers is such that those working part time are working to support our school on some of their non-work days, this is a short term solution. We are working on longer term solutions.

Things you can do to help:

* thank our teachers for their great work (email / phone / in person / letter from you or your child)

* let teacher friends know that we are regularly looking for relief staff (and all they need to do apply to Catholic Education Canberra and Goulburn to be on our list);

* spread the word about our wonderful school and why teachers may like to join our team;

* enrol in a teacher education program and join the profession; (yes, this could be you!)

* pray for our community - our current and future teachers.

St Pat's supporting others in need At the time of the bushfires we were blessed to receive kindness through tangible goods and intangible thoughts and prayers from schools near and far. One school in the Lismore Diocese sent learning journals for our students. At the time of the recent Lismore floods our school and Community Council reached out to a school in Lismore to offer support and prayers. We sent cards, letters, bookmarks and a small Lego set for each student (thanks to the help of Good360) at St Joseph's Coraki and St Joseph's Woodburn (total school populations close to our school population). Our Community Council sent $500 to the P&F to support an activity / resource to help recover from the floods. Here are some photos of the joy being received.

 

Blessings

Jo