St Francis of Assisi Primary School - Calwell
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120 Casey Cres
Calwell ACT 2905
Subscribe: https://stfranciscalwell.schoolzineplus.com/subscribe

Email: elc.stfranciscalwell@cg.catholic.edu.au
Phone: 02 6292 4500
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Principal's News

Dear Parents and Carers,

This is our last Newsletter for 2022. I want to take the time to thank you for your support this year in my first year returning to St Francis as Principal. I am extremely grateful to lead such an incredible school community and have thoroughly enjoyed working with you all. It has been a huge year with many challenges and change processes to manage. It seems like a world ago when we came into the school year with Covid plans and co-horting arrangements, terms with no whole school events or excursions, to now being able to operate with some normality is refreshing. Despite these challenges, our data collection and assessment indicate that our students have made significant educational gains that they should be incredibly proud of.

I want to thank the extremely dedicated staff at St Francis for their tireless efforts and commitment to the students this year. Working in a school is more than just a job it is a vocation. Schools are not easy places to work in and they require a real dedication to one's vocation to manage the complexities that exist in educating, shaping and forming young lives to be positive contributors to society.  

Semester 2 reports

Our teachers have worked tirelessly to produce our Semester 2 reports which will go home via Compass today. Many hours are spent planning, teaching, assessing, moderating, collating and entering data for our end-of-semester reports. I hope you find these documents useful records of your child’s learning. The grades and descriptors on the report are a measurement of a child's learning assessed against the achievement standards outlined in the Australian Curriculum. They do not take into account learning behaviours, attitudes and effort. I hope our PT interviews last week were able to provide you with some information related to these other critical elements of your child’s learning. If you have any trouble accessing these reports, please contact the school office.

Meet and Greet

Today our students spent some time in their new classrooms with their teacher and peers. We had a couple of absences today with staff unwell or unable to make it from their current schools. We will organise for these teachers to meet with their classes next week if possible.

Calander Link for 2023

We are moving to a digital calendar as our primary source of event scheduling. We will still send home a printed school Calander but with a reduced number of dates prepopulated. We will ask you to consult the digital school calendar and transfer dates if this is how you operate. Below are some ways to access the School’s digital Calander:

The digital school calendar is the most up-to-date representation of happenings in the School and is our one source of truth. There are a couple of ways to access this quickly:

Kinder Orientation

We had our final Kindergarten Orientation last week, with many parents joining us in the hall, while their children settled into their new classrooms, to discuss life at school and network with other parents. Kindergarten 2023 parents will receive an email from me next week with copies of the slides and Kinder Assessment booking information. We have had some issues with the booking links, which we have been working through this week, that have prevented earlier distribution.

Principal Lunch Monday

We will have our Semester 2 Principal’s Lunch on Monday in the hall. Those students who have earned 90 ‘Gottchas’ for being caught living out our School Wide Positive Behaviour statements of Be Safe, Be Responsible, Be Respectful, and Be a Learner. Those students who have achieved this have been invited through an Event invite on the Compass Parent Portal, which has more detail related to the afternoon.

Christmas Carols 2023

Thank you to all the parents who attended our carols on the lawn outside the church on Monday. It was so nice to see our community back together after so long. We worked out the last time Carols occurred was in 2018. A big thank you to the Community Council for organising the food, drink & craft sales. A big thank you to Mrs Dimmock, who coordinated the singing with students and performed on the night and Mrs Cossettini for setting the sound for the night. Thank you, to our staff also for supporting the event by creating craft items and being present on the night after a long evening of Parent Teacher Interviews. 

Staffing 2023

We have several teaching staff leaving the St Francis community in 2023. Next week we will farewell these members of staff during our Farewell Mass. We wish the following people all the best with their moves in 2023:

Tiffany Reedy (Principal St Greg’s Qbn), Karen Western (Coordinator Holy Family), Debbie Cossettini (Librarian Holy Family), Andrea Gatt (Transfer for 2023 to Holy Family), Tim O’Brien (High School), Lauren Mewburn (Public Service), Michelle Marshall (Relief Teaching).

Our CSA team will be different next year, with several staff moving onto new opportunities, studying or graduating from university. We farewell the following members of our 2022 Green Room team: Tiana Cossettini, Briony Fleming, Emmie Hofsink, Jo Laidlaw, Madison Graeber-Browne, Grace Robinson.

A full list of the staff for 2023 will be included in the Parent Memo next week.

Blessings and best wishes

Sean Rutledge

Principal