Dear Families,

It has been great today to pop into a few virtual classes and welcome students back. We have really missed seeing their faces and hearing about what has been going on while they have been at home.

What a week! I knew there was always a possibility that we could have a COVID at school, but no one ever really expects it to happen to their school. I would like to sincerely thank you for your support during this time. I have not had a chance to respond to all of the emails and facebook messages of support, but I am truly grateful for your support during this time, it has been very much appreciated and is one of the many things that makes me appreciate being part of this wonderful community.

While the testing was not a pleasant experience, it was lovely to see so many of you at the testing site at Erindale yesterday. While it seems that many people have already received a negative result, we must be alert to any COVID symptoms that can still develop up to, and in rare cases, even beyond the 14 day quarantine period. If you or your child do develop symptoms, you are required to have another test and isolate until you receive a negative result. We also keep those who do have COVID in our community in front of mind and pray that they have a speedy and full recovery.

At this stage, I am not sure when we will be able to reopen. We have a few compliance items to complete before we receive the all-clear from the regulators. I am hopeful that we will be able to have all of this completed in the next few days. The school, including the ELC, did receive a full deep clean last Thursday. While I have not had a chance to see the results just yet, the photos look quite impressive. So I am sure that once we do return, we will return back to a sparkling clean school.

We know there are a few families who are struggling with devices and have found that some of the Chrome books we handed out are not allowing students to log into Teams. If this is the case, please contact Mrs Carmen Myles via email carmen.myles@cg.catholic.edu.au and we will try to sort this out once we are all out of isolation.

The team at Catholic Education has set up a Whole School Teams channel for us to have our morning assemblies and to distribute whole school information. It would be good if you could have a conversation with your child about commenting on posts on this site. The comments go through to the whole school and the whole school receives notifications, which can be frustrating for some. We have modified the permissions, but it is still possible to comment on some old posts. If your child does continue to comment on the post, I will give you a call to let you know this is continuing to happen.

We have updated our remote learning site on our webpage. While most of the lessons for students will be posted via Teams, SeeSaw or Google Classrooms, there are a few great sites you or your child might like to look at, especially if they would like to complete some additional or extension work.

I sent out information about emergency support from various organisations, particularly if you are struggling to have food delivered. If you need to order home delivery, there are a range of options to consider when ordering groceries. As well as the major supermarkets, a number of other grocers and independent supermarkets also offer delivery. For further information go to:
https://www.covid19.act.gov.au/community/access-help#Grocery-delivery-options

If you are still struggling, both St Vincent de Paul and Uniting Care Kippax have contacted me and said that they are able to support our families if you need help.

We have a few fun things organised for this week. It is both Book Week and Sabbath Week this week and given we are returning back after what has been a challenging time for many, we are keeping things light for the remainder of this week. There is some information in this newsletter regarding a virtual Book Week parade your child might like to be involved in. We understand that almost all of us will not be able to venture to the shops to gather supplies to make a Book Week outfit, so we will need to get creative. We will also have an opportunity to show what we have been doing to look after our wellbeing and will be able to share some of this with our community. Mrs Wicks is organising something special for our community involving our staff, so look out for that later in the week. I would like to put up a few happy snaps of remote learning, Book Week and Wellbeing activities onto to our facebook page, so if you do have some photos you are happy to go up onto Facebook, please send them through to me on Leah.Taylor@cg.catholic.edu.au.

Once again, I want to thank you for your overwhelming support during this time and I look forward to seeing you all again.

Take care and God bless

 
Leah Taylor
Principal