Dear Families,

Welcome back to the start of another exciting year of learning. It was delightful to see your children’s smiles on Monday morning and it was clearly evident that everyone had a well-rested break with lots of stories to share. I hope to be able to catch up with most of you at the Meet and Greet Welcome BBQ tonight from 5:30pm to 6:30pm.

All students participated in the school’s orientation program last week, learning the new song, being introduced to the theme, and becoming reacquainted with expectations at school. It was lovely to see students displaying such care for one another throughout the week, especially as they played in our smaller playground. It made me once again realise how blessed I am to work in such a beautiful community.

Last week was possibly the busiest week I have ever had in my 24 years of teaching. Not only did we have a community meeting regarding the PFAS contamination on site, we finished off the week with a swimming carnival and water fun day. I would like to thank Ms Vickers and Mr Mackenzie for organising the carnival, the parent volunteers and the teachers and CSAs for their organisation on the day, including the Infant teachers and CSAs for planning a Water Fun Day back at school for K-2. Ribbons will be distributed at the Friday morning assembly. As there were a number of heats, your child may not receive a ribbon even if they gained a place in their heat, ribbons will only be given to the first 3 place getters in each event.

New Counsellor

Our new school counsellor from Marymead, Al Robinson started with us this week. You can read a little more about him later in this newsletter.

PFAS Meeting

Firstly, I would like to thank those who attended the Community meeting either in person or on Zoom for remaining respectful throughout the meeting. It is understandable that this issue has raised some concerns and frustration about both the contamination and the speed at which the site is being assessed and remediated.

We understand that some members of our community were not able to attend, but were still interested in finding out more about the PFAS contamination and the planned remediation of the site.

The Communications Team at Catholic Education organised for the event to be recorded and have placed the video in their Youtube channel. If you would like to watch the video it can be found at the following link here.  Passcode: 8=D3R^HK, you will need to type in the passcode.

Some of you may have further questions relating to the PFAS contamination and planned remediation. If you do have questions please send them through to me via email at leah.taylor@cg.catholic.edu.au and I will forward them to the relevant person to be answered. We will also make answers to questions on notice available to those who attended physically or via zoom, available once they come in.

The school and Catholic Education are working closely and collaboratively with the ACT government to be able to remediate the site before the final assessments are complete so we can return the oval to the community as soon as possible. Catholic Education is supporting the school with this by funding the irrigation and leveling work so that this can occur at the same time as the remediation work. This means that the school is able to bring forward its planned work for the school oval by more than two years. We have engaged Paul Barnett to plan and manage this work and look forward to the final result. I will keep the community updated on progress.

I thank you again for your ongoing support

 God Bless