St. Mary's eNews
Term 4 Week 9
CyberSafety Project Partnership
Principal's Message: 2 December 2022
Dear families,
What a marvelous night it was for our Arts Spectacular. The weather played nice and it was a great return to a night that has been a part of St Mary’s for a long time. Our children were beautiful and you can tell they certainly love an audience!
There wouldn’t be many of us who can believe we have 2 weeks to go of the 2022 school year, There is still so much to do!
This week we welcomed small groups of our new preps who got to spend some time in their new classrooms with their 2023 teachers. There was a shared excitement from parents, children and of course, from Miss A and Miss B. I’m not exactly sure who was most excited, but I can make a fairly accurate guess!
Next week I will be announcing some staffing changes for next year.
2023 Fees and Levies
After keeping increases at bay over the last 3 years, we have had to increase our fees and some levies by a larger margin for 2023.
The Summary and payment information can be found here.
Without going into too much detail, you may know that as a Catholic School, we receive some Government funding, but not the same value given to public schools. The gap is what Catholic/private schools need to cover and this is covered by fees charged. This gap is called the CtC (Capacity to Contribute), and this varies from school to school. The gap was previously determined by our suburb's SES (Socio-Economic Status) and has this year been replaced by DMI (Direct Measure of Income). The former measure took into account the suburb one lived in whereas the DMI is based on the actual financial data of parents/guardians at the school.
In short, the DMI essentially tells schools how much they could/should be charging.
After meeting with our business manager, he showed me that over the years, we have not charged the full gap payment, nor have we increased fees enough to reduce this gap. As a result, our overall funds continue to deplete each year. While we cannot fully bridge this gap this year, we need to try to ensure this gap doesn't continue to widen.
Therefore, our family fee will increase by $114 to $1736. This is a 7% increase. It won't close the gap that has accumulated, but it will cover the increase that has come as a result of the change to how the gap is calculated this year.
Our curriculum levies will remain unchanged, while other costs have increased minimally to ensure events are fully covered (eg swimming and camps)
For reference, here are the fee increases that took place over the last 5 years (please note there were also curriculum levy increases. These have not been included here:
- 2019: $50
- 2020: $25
- 2021: $0
- 2022: $47
In comparison to our local Catholic primary schools, our fees are still much lower, despite our DMI index being higher or equal to theirs.
As has always been the case, we encourage any families finding fee payment difficult to come and make an appointment and make arrangements that work for their individual family circumstances.
Religious Education Curriculum review
MACS are seeking stakeholder input into a review currently being undertaken on the Religious Education (RE) Curriculum in Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne. The Review is being led by Ms Netina Giacco, Professor John Haldane and Professor Gerard O’Shea.
A crucial part of this review is learning from the perspectives of school parents. To gather that input, I warmly encourage you to complete a survey on RE in Catholic schools.
The survey can be accessed and completed via this link: https://onlinesurvey.cecv.catholic.edu.au/surveys/2022-RE-Curriculum-Review-Survey
The survey questions are broad and open-ended, in order to allow you to provide as much or as little input as you feel appropriate. You can complete it with any, and varying, level of detail - as you see fit.
Contribution to the survey will be anonymous, although the survey does request some demographic information about you, in order to contextualise results.
In acknowledging the challenges and pressures on everyone at this time of year, the deadline for responses has been set to 20 December 2022.
I am grateful for your assistance and support in this important work.
Wishing you a wonderfully sunny weekend,
Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage
Walkathon 2022
The raffle will be drawn on Wednesday 7th December from 8.45am on the synthetic grass outside the hall. Family members are welcome to stay for the raffle draw.
Regards
Marg
Deputy Principal / Wellbeing Leader
Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage
Arts Spectacular - That's a wrap!
If you were unable to make it on the night, you are welcome to visit the Art Show on Monday to take a look before it is taken down on Tuesday.
Thanks to the staff for preparing the students for the night, especially Mrs Zimmerman, Mrs Hamilton and the class teachers.
Thanks also to our comperes, School Captains, Sophie, Jackie, Koby and Daniel who I'm sure you'll agree did a spectacular job!
Click here to take a look at our gallery of photos from the evening.
Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage
Save the Date
Students will be will be given an icypole and supervised by staff on the basketball court during the afternoon tea.
It will also be an opportunity to farewell those staff who will be leaving us at the end of the year.
We hope you are able to come along.
Regards
Marg Masseni
Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage
Social Justice - Advent Appeal 2022
We are currently holding our St Vincent de Paul Christmas appeal, another way you can help those in need.
Christmas can be a very stressful and tough time for many people who are experiencing poverty, loneliness and hardship.
Donations of toys, Christmas items, longlife foods etc may be sent in with the children as each class has been allocated a basket to fill. Alternatively, donations may be dropped off at the office.
Your gift could change lives. Through your support, many individuals and families will be able to have the Christmas they deserve, a Christmas of hope and joy.
Yours in Faith
Matthew Taylor
Leader of Religious Education
mtaylor@smaltona.catholic.edu.au
Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage
LLLL Parent Info - 21st Feb
Please let us know if you are coming and whether you require child minding services via the Operoo note sent last week. What is Little Learners Love Literacy (LLLL)?
Little Learners Love Literacy® is an explicit and sequential literacy approach for teaching children to read, write and spell with confidence.
Evidence-based literacy research stresses the importance of explicit and sequential literacy teaching from the beginning. Our goal is to have this happening in every Foundation classroom from the start, giving children the best possible chance of developing into fluent readers, writers and spellers.
Little Learners Love Literacy® is a systematic and engaging program with focussed explicit lessons, games, crafts, music, puppets, drawing and much
more.
Brenda Lycke
Literacy Leader
blycke@smaltona.catholic.edu.au
Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage
Community News
BIG Summer Read!
A message from After School Care
Try Synchronised Swimming
Emmanuel College News
Mount St. Josephs News
Parish Bulletin
Williamstown Community News
Music Lessons
We would also like to thank Mancini Real Estate for their continuous support to St Mary's Altona
Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage
Carol's Retirement
As mentioned in Sonia’s eNews article last week, Carol Hicks will be retiring at the end of the year. Parents, friends, ex students will have the opportunity to celebrate with Carol at the ‘Thank You’ afternoon tea for parents/carers on Monday 12th December.
Afternoon tea will be held in the hall and will be preceded by the final assembly for 2022 hosted by the School Captains.If you are unable to attend that event, you’d be welcome to catch up with Carol on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays between now and the end of the year.
If you know of ex students taught by Carol who might like to see her, please pass this information on to them.