28th August 2019

Dear Parents and Carers

Thank you to our Year Three parents for organising the Father’s Day Breakfast this morning. The cold and wet weather did not deter our dads or family representatives from joining in with the children to eat breakfast, to watch the band and to enjoy their children’s work.

Our Sacred Heart soccer players were commended at the assembly following the breakfast and medals were presented by Ed and Nick from XLR8. The coaches and managers were thanked as well. Thanks must go to Fiona Dynon who runs the soccer for the Sports Club and does this by herself!

Naplan results: Despite the news in the media regarding Naplan results schools have not received results as yet. As soon as the results are delivered to the school they will be sent home to Year 3 and Year 5 parents. A report regarding the school results will be delivered at the next P and F meeting on the 10th September.  All are welcome to attend.

Thank you to those parents who responded re our concerns for road safety in the morning. Many of them also said there was a concern that parents were executing U turns in Cardinal Street after drop off. I’m sure if we work together that we can make the morning drop off safe for all our families. Regarding the suggestion I made to have a parent roster which I had at a previous school. This was not to do the rangers work for them, the roster that was set up was to assist children out of the cars and keep the drop off time as short as possible. We also combined it with a “welcome to school” acknowledgement to each child as they stepped out of the car. My parent engagement team had brought to our attention the research that a simple welcome each day could lift the mood and benefit the child emotionally.  It soon became everyone’s favourite duty for teachers and it was very easy to fill the roster with parents . The roster is still running to this day eight years later!

Good luck to our Year Six and their wonderful teachers who are heading to Canberra next week. Excursions and camps are an important part of school life for our seniors but it is the teachers that I admire enormously for giving their time so willingly to be away from home, to be on duty 24 hours a day in order to bring the History curriculum alive.

On Tuesday the 3rd of September I will attend a compulsory Principals/Priests meeting with the Archbishop. As our other senior leaders will be in Canberra we will have a relieving principal for the day. Mr Steve Conlan who recently retired from St Michaels Lane Cove will be Acting Principal for the day.

You are all invited to the Family Faith Celebration at Marist College North Shore College next Wednesday the 4th of September from 6.30pm to 8pm. Members of our choir will be performing alongside John Burland at the celebration. The Faith Celebration features a combined choir from our North Shore network of schools.

This week we were advised by Sydney Catholic Schools that they have appointed a Chief Executive to lead the network or hub of schools in the North Shore. This is one of the first appointments by the Director to this type of model of networks and leadership. Ms Barbara Watkins (recently from Loreto Normanhurst) will guide the Northshore network which comprises of Sacred Heart Mosman, Blessed Sacrament Clifton Gardens, St Michaels Lane Cove, St Mary’s North Sydney and Marist College North Shore. We will pass on to the community more details of this role and what it means for our school as it comes to hand. It is an exciting time for our network as we explore ways that we can be stronger together for the good of each individual student and family.

After years of service to our community Joseph Arena has let us know that he will no longer be serving lunches to Sacred Heart from the end of this term. We thank Joseph for his prompt and smiling service over many years and wish him well in his new ventures. We are currently negotiating with a new service provider for an online service and will let you know the details as soon as possible.

We welcome Sheryl Imlach to our administrative team. Sheryl will replace Dianne Loots when she moves with her family to the Gold Coast at the end of this term. Sheryl has many years of school administrative experience and is an alumni parent at Sacred Heart. 

Regards

Julie Caldwell