Dear Families,

Welcome to 2021. I hope you all had some opportunity to rest and spend time with family and friends over this break. I know some of you may have had to quickly change plans for Christmas, or had to make mad dashes back to Canberra, before borders closed. I know our family Christmas looked very different from the one we planned only a few months earlier. That said, I hope that like us, you were still able to make the most of the sunshine.

We officially welcome Mr Peter Collins (Year 5), Mr Scott Troldahl (Year 1) andMs Bronwyn Neuth (ELC) to St Thomas Aquinas. Some of you may have already had a chance to meet them and I know everyone in our community will make them feel welcome.

I look forward to welcoming our new ELC and Kindergarten students on Monday and Thursday for the end of the week ELC class. I know this can be daunting for some, especially given we cannot have parents in the classroom as we usually do. I hope parents of these children will be able to join us for ‘tea and tissues’ in the hall from 9.30 on Monday.

Today, teachers and Classroom Support Assistants are participating in a System-wide training day in the Science of Learning. This System initiative is the result of many years of analysing best practice for teaching from around the world. Initialit, a program rolled out in Kindergarten last year, is part of this initiative. Over the coming months, staff will delve deeper into the Science of Learning and develop an understanding of what this looks like in classrooms. While we know we have great teachers here at St Thomas Aquinas, we are always striving to do even better and we are excited to be continuing this journey.

We had further relaxations to COVID restrictions and have been able to reintroduce some activities, albeit in a slightly modified form. These are as follows:

• Parents can come on site, including for morning assembly provided adults socially distance.
• Visitors who are entering the school building beyond the Front Office will need to continue to sign in. You will not have to sign in if you are staying at the Front Office area to, for example, pay fees, pick-up a sick child or ask a quick question. We will have to limit the number of adults in the front reception to 4 people at a time to comply with social distancing requirements.
• ALL visitors must enter the school building via the Front Office.
• Parent volunteers are permitted and must sign-in at the Front Office. Please talk to your child’s teacher if you would like to help out. All volunteers must have a current WWVP card.
• Children will be dismissed from their external doors, or in the courtyard, for those classrooms without an external door.
• Car Park drop-off and pick-up will continue as per last year. Many families seemed to appreciate this so we thought we would keep it going.
• We will be allowing one family member to attend their child's assembly. You will need to arrive early to sign-in and be seated before the assembly begins.
• Awards will be given out at Friday morning assemblies in even weeks so parents can be present for these awards.

I urge families to check the ACT COVID19 site https://www.covid19.act.gov.au/, especially if you are travelling. If you have been in a hotspot, you are required to isolate for 14 days. We will continue to send any child home with cold and flu-like symptoms and request that you take your child to have a COVID test. Children will not be allowed to return to school while they are still displaying symptoms.

2021 will bring with it a lot of change for St Thomas Aquinas. Remediation of the oval has commenced and you may have already seen additional fencing marking out the whole area. This initial work will be followed by the rest of the oval later in the year, so the school will finally have the play areas returned to the community. We will also see the building of our new ELC commence and hope this work will be completed by the end of the year. We expect to see earthworks commencing as part of both of these projects in the coming weeks, and I will keep you updated about the progress. The playground is being moved to the other side of the school to make way for the ELC building. This was delayed a little, but we should have this in place and covered over the next few weeks.

Yours in Faith

Leah Taylor
Principal