Principal's Message: 4 April 2025

Dear families,

Our shared liturgy today in the church was a great way to gather as a Catholic community, remembering the events of Holy Week as we head into the Easter holidays.

The liturgy, beautifully and prayerfully arranged by Mr Freeman and presented by our student community, provided reflective space to ponder how the events of Holy Week affect us and our interactions with family, friends and the wider community.

We later gathered for our Easter raffle. Thank you to our P&F who organised the prize packs and to our parent community for the donations. We had over 70 prizes. 

We were also presented with a cheque from the P&F president, Adele, for $52,500. Thank you so much for your generosity and to Katarina, the P&F grants officer for securing extra grants which contributed to this amazing amount. We have spent some of the money completing the tram renovations last year. We will also be purchasing some LEGO Education kits for students to use during STEM classes and some new equipment for the playground.

The sale of our Hot Cross Buns fundraiser also raised money for the Royal Children’s Hospital. 

It’s been a big term for learning at St Mary’s; especially for our Preps and new staff. It’s also been a great term of learning for all students and staff as we continue to explore the Science of Learning. Our Prep and Junior teachers and students have made enormous gains in their phonics understanding with the implementation of UFLI. I am impressed by the way our students are not only putting words together to read and spell, but they are also able to explain how sounds are pronounced and why certain sounds belong together.

I thank our new staff for the faith and trust they have shown in the programs and processes we have in place and for their openness to give things a go and also the expertise in the craft of teaching they have brought with them and shared with their new colleagues. It’s always exciting to learn new ways of doing things from each other and coming up with a great mix of old and new ideas to create something even better.

I wish our students and families a blessed Easter and a restful holiday.

We look forward to a choc-a-block Term 2 (see what I did there?!)

Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage