Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to Term 3! I hope you and your family had the opportunity to find time to rest and relax over the school holiday period. Unfortunately, the predicted increase of Covid cases in the ACT has seen all Catholic Schools in the ACT and NSW adopt more stringent Covid measures for Term 3. See below for further information.

Student Achievements- Swimming and Netball

We have had several significant student achievements brought to my attention that I would like to share with you in swimming and netball.

Annie M, Olivia C, Zara Y and Will and Noah B represented the Tuggeranong Region at the ACT swimming carnival back in May. An outstanding achievement by some very talented swimmers.  Annie M was selected to represent the ACT (and SFA) at the upcoming Australian School Sports swimming meet in August 2022. Annie placed three times in the top 10 in the 10 yr old Country swimmers and has qualified to swim at the Junior State meet in September. Congratulations, Annie and all our swimmers, on their achievements!

Netball

On the 2nd and 3rd of July, the ACT Junior Netball Championships were held in Lyneham.  We had a number of our students playing for TNA. This was a full weekend of netball for all participants on what was reported to be an extremely cold weekend!

Some of our Yr 6 girls Willow B, Gracie J, Elissa G and Keira K all played in the U12, Div 2 competition. They came out as undefeated winners in their Division. 

Linley S and Mackenzie M, Ava C and Olivia C all played in the U11 competition. With a few wins and some tough games, these girls played extremely well over the weekend. 

A further congratulations to Amelia A and Georgia K who were selected for the TNA Development Academy. Congratulations to all our representative netballers who represented our school and the Tuggeranong region so well.

Covid Measures for Term 3

As outlined in my letter on Tuesday, Catholic Education has adopted more stringent Covid measures for Term 3 to minimise the transmission of Covid and ensure our schools remain open. As reported in the media, there is a predicted Covid peak forecast in weeks 4 and 8 of this term which could see triple the number of Covid cases currently being seen in the community. This would have a significant effect on school operations and the continuity of Teaching and Learning in Schools. To try and minimise the impact on school operations, Catholic Education has taken a risk-averse approach to ensure the maximum number of staff are available in schools. This means the following measures are being undertaken:

• Any event that could take extra staff away from the school in Term 3 should be reconsidered and if possible, postponed. This includes planned excursions and camps. For Term 3, we will not be charging the excursion levy to parents. Where possible and in a Covid safe way, we will continue to host incursions for our students.
• We are still planning on hosting our Athletics Carnival in Week 4 as it is in the local area and completely outdoors, more information will follow shortly.
• Parents will be notified if 25% of a cohort contracts Covid in a 7-day period. It is extremely important you notify the school if your child contracts covid via email stfranciscalwell@cg.catholic.edu.au or by submitting an absence note on Compass. These will be tracked to notify parents if we reach the 25% threshold.
• Current ACT health advice is for close or household contacts to not attend school if practicable. If students do need to attend, they can as long as they are asymptomatic, conduct a RAT test 24 hours before returning to school and then again every 48 hours while they are a close/household contact.
• If students are symptomatic, they are not to attend school. If students present with unexplained symptoms at school, they will be isolated and parents contacted to pick them up from school.
• Schools are to limit the number of visitors they have onsite. This unfortunately, includes parents attending assemblies. Those who were able to attend an assembly last term will know that this decision is one I am particularly saddened by.
• We can continue our morning and afternoon pick-up and drop-off arrangements; however, we will need to be stricter with the number of people we can accommodate in the hall. This may mean a longer wait time to pick up your children. My advice is to grab a coffee and if possible, come a little later when the flow of parents is greatly diminished. We are staffed to provide supervision until 3:30 pm.
• Any meetings between staff and parents should be conducted remotely wherever possible.
• The school will continue to use all resources available to ensure adequate supervision ratios at school. In the event a significant number of staff are unavailable, there may be a time when we may need to keep cohorts at home, provide minimal supervision or most unlikely close the school under the direction of the Director of Catholic Education. In any of these cases, we will endeavour to provide parents with as much advance warning as possible.
• Unlike Term 1, we will be unable to provide work for students who are required to learn from home this term. To support students who are required to learn from home the following resource has been put together to use while students are not in attendance at school.

 Parent Support - Remote Learning Resources.pdf

 There is a lot of information above which may take a while to digest. Tiffany Reedy and I will have a briefing for parents and try and answer some questions next week via MS Teams on Monday at 10:30 am and Thursday at 3:30 pm NB. please note the content of these meetings will be the same. The links to these meetings are below:

• Monday 25^th July 10:30 am- Click here to join the meeting
• Thursday 28^th July 3:30 pm- Click here to join the meeting

I know there will be a lot of disappointment in the community about events that are unable to proceed this term and parents not being able to attend onsite assemblies and other events. My hope is that these predictions do not come to fruition, and we are able to resume more normal school operations sooner than expected. I thank you for your patience and understanding as we navigate these challenging times.

Celebration Mass for Lisa Conroy

Our planned celebration mass for Lisa Conroy will still go ahead in Week 3. We will unfortunately, be unable to invite the broader community as originally planned. Lisa will receive a gift from the Community Council on behalf of the parent body to recognise her contribution to the school over many years. We are putting together a memory book for Lisa. If you have any messages, memories or artworks you would like to contribute to Lisa, please email them to jo.grogan@cg.catholic.edu.au by the end of Week 2.

Blessings and best wishes for the week ahead

Kind regards

Sean Rutledge

Principal